Self-Advising

It’s strange how I can mete out some of the best advice to people around me, but I can’t do the same when I find myself placed in the same situation.  Case in point: a friend recovering from a stroke lamented sadly over dinner the other day that he no longer has any friends.  They just don’t contact him anymore.

In all seriousness, I told him that while some are fair-weathered friends who just avoid friends in trouble like plague, many others just don’t know what to say to him for fear of hurting him further.  Afterall, it’s not everyday that one comes face to face with a stroke-recovering person.  By and by, it’s natural that they drift apart.

Instead of wallowing in self-pity, we advised him to make the first move and start contacting his friends again, to let them know that he has regained most of his speech and physical functions like walking.  I’m not sure how much he digested, because that’s not important.  What’s more important was, that night he needed a listening ear, and both XX and I were there for him.

Sounds like some great advice, right?

But you know what’s the problem?  I can’t practise what I preach.

In our recent period of bereavement, condolences poured in and then some.  But conspicuously missing were also words of comfort from some friends I was counting on hearing from.  And then I started giving excuses on their behalf – they don’t like dogs and Sugar didn’t have an impact in their lives, they missed my FB status updates, I have not been a good friend myself, I have been irritating, the birth of another friend’s baby is more important than the death of my dog… or maybe, they just didn’t care.  It’s just a dog, you know…

At the end of the day, I know the answer.  It could be a combination of everything listed above, or that they didn’t know what to say.  I learnt a very important lesson – it doesn’t matter what you say or don’t say, just telling the person that you care is sufficient.  The next time something unfortunate happens to a friend, I know I shouldn’t hesitate to contact the person and tell him/her that I care.  Close friend or not.

I grew up having many friendship issues in that I gave up numerous friendships the moment I feel uncomfortable.  Making friends is never a problem, but maintaining friendships is.  Like, I can turn up for a gathering and notice things like, hey the group of them have a lot more in common than I with them.  And they meet up on a regular basis.  What am I doing here?  I’m redundant.

I know this just sounds so juvenile.

Being a highly-sensitive introverted creature is sometimes such a curse.  I’d rather be the extroverted and oblivious one who is happy to be in anyone’s company.  But I’m born like that, I can’t help observing the dynamics in a group setting, and how I feel like my presence (or for that matter, absence) doesn’t make a difference.

Negativity, shoo!

The First Day of School

Do you remember your first day of school?  I do.  It shouldn’t surprise you.  According to the hubby, I have an elephant’s memory for such things.  Not to his advantage, I tell you.  I get extremely annoyed when he doesn’t remember the name of the first movie we watched together and the likes.  If I go on, it’s going to take up one whole post just to cover his transgressions.

So.  My first day of school.  I started attending school at the age of 4, in part because my cousin cum closest friend who is a year older started school at 5 and I was bored without her company.  My other suspicion was that I was probably driving my granny up the wall with my excess unreleased energy – energy which would have found release if I were running around the neighbourhood with my cousin.

And so I went to school too.  Pre-school.  Nursery.  Or whatever you would call it.

My first day of school was a DISASTER.  Sitting at the drain curb, I was adamant about not entering the class, and my granny was just as adamant about embarrassing me with her loud scoldings.  And then a well-meaning (read: busybody) neighbour thought my mum should be informed that her daughter was being difficult.  She went as far as to walk back to our house (my granny and parents were neighbours before the new flat was completed) to pass on that piece of information.  I half-suspected that she enjoyed every bit of it, from my discomfort, to my granny’s exasperation and my mum’s disbelief.

And when I saw my mum, I knew it was game over.  Better to brave the classroom full of strangers than to incur her wrath.  True enough, she started ranting about how a young girl like myself should not be so stubborn and that I was causing her to be late for work.  My to-be teachers then also joined in to coax me into entering the class because the drama was dragging way too long.

I finally relented.  The many adults crowding over me was too much for me to bear.  And so I entered the classroom so full of apprehension  that till today, I still can remember the sickening feeling.  I must have even turned green then.

To clarify, I wasn’t being difficult.  Gosh, how do I even begin to explain to them that it was their fault that I found it difficult to enter the classroom.  Granny was running a little late that day and I was late for school.  Late.

Does that make any sense?

Probably not, if you’re not an introvert who is also socially inept.  You see, a classroom of 30 over strange faces, albeit all of my age, was highly intimidating and too much for my senses to bear.  They were boisterous, and seemed to all know each other.  I didn’t know how to react.  And all sorts of thoughts ran through my head – what if they ostracised me and what if no one wanted to be my friend?  The panic button was pressed and all I could do was to react to that – DON’T ENTER THE CLASSROOM.

I doubt my granny and mum would have understood all that.  And even if they could have, I wouldn’t be as eloquent in expressing my thoughts as a 4 year-old.  So all in all, it was a lost cause.

School wasn’t that bad after I sat down at my seat right in the middle of the classroom.  The classmates around me were also shy and quiet.  So we got along fine as we turned to concentrate on our colouring activity.

By the end of the day, I made a lot of friends.  And the teachers all loved me, until they realised that I was not quite the sweet, quiet girl I appeared to be.  Oh, I did become quite the monster after I warmed up to them all.  Granny smiled when she picked me up from school at the end of class.  She was relieved that her favourite grandchild was back to her usual social self.

That first day of school taught me a lot of things, although I wasn’t able to quite understand everything back then – that I am different from most other people, and that an unfamiliar environment unsettles me.  That knowledge has saved me quite a bit of agony.  I always endeavour to be early whenever it’s the first day of anything, be it classes, work, courses etc.  This is my way of coping.

Quarter of My Life

After the post on where I spend approximately half of my life, I am now following up with where I spend one quarter of my life… the study room.

I spend a lot of time in this room, much more than the bedroom.  In this tiny ‘blue room’, I surf the internet, blog, process my photographs, plan our travels, read the bible, do my Japanese homework and practise on my violin.  Like my tiny cubicle at work, this room is my sanctuary at home, away from the hubby.  I love him, no doubt about that.  But spending time with him 24/7 is going to make me want to kill him.  I need a lot of private time and space to myself.

The dogs are always welcomed, but only in the permutation of Sugar-Paris, Sugar-Belle or Belle.  Never Paris-Belle because the two of them play-fighting in the room drives me mad sometimes.  They snort like pigs!

The study room in this state makes me most happy.  And functional.  Unfortunately, I am not that much a minimalist at home as compared to at work.  Nobody at work believed that my house could be messy, let alone my study table.  The truth is, a small work cubicle is so much more manageable than a house.  Not that I stay in a big one.  I wish.

It doesn’t appear to be so from the picture but my bookshelves are overflowing! The books are already double stacked as it is, and that has been making me very upset because I cannot tell what books I have hidden behind those in front when I want to pick a book to read.  And did I mention I still have books residing at my parents’ place?  Argh… I need a bigger study!

Time to hunt for a new house, perchance?

Self Talking

I talk to myself.  A lot.  Is that even normal?

But really, what’s normalcy?  In today’s context, if you behave within the acceptable realms of the society, you are labelled as ‘normal’.  Otherwise you are ‘abnormal’.

So, ‘chopping’ seats in Singapore with your tissue pack is normal, and because I obstinately refuse to cave in, I am abnormal?

Hardly.

You know what’s the most infuriating thing?  While I myself don’t stoop to doing that, I actually respect that seats are taken when I see the tissue packs.  I must be mental.

Mental.  Yes, that’s the whole point of this post.  Is talking to oneself a manifestation of mental illness?  Especially when I was a once a patient undergoing treatment for depressive disorders?

I love and am contented with being alone – in the house, working late hours at the office, in the car or even staying awake on flights when the hubby would be fast asleep.  Yes, that must be why flying holds such an inexplicable appeal to me.  I could survive for hours on end without speaking to anyone because 1) I am not that chatty by nature and 2) if I wish to talk, I talk to myself, or my dogs if I’m home.  You could say that I am often alone, but never lonely.  Strangely enough, feeling lonely is an emotion rather foreign to me.  There are so many things to do when one is alone – listening to music, reading, blogging, talking to dogs, baking – why on earth would anyone feel lonely?

The good thing is, I do not hold extended conversations with myself which I personally feel, is definitely a manifestation of a whacko in action.  I just like to think my thoughts out sometimes; it helps me to make decisions better.  Just like how I often like to write things down because reading the words helps me to put things into perspective.  Even as I’m typing this post, I’m actually dictating to myself – talking out loud, typing and editing simultaneously.

I really am mental, aren’t I?  Not that I really care what everyone else thinks where the intactness of my mental faculties is concerned.  So long as I know I have an IQ higher than 97% of the world’s population and I am therefore capable of making sound decisions.

Now how did the controversial topic on IQ even crop up?  Never mind.

I am just curious if introverts are more prone to self talking than extroverts.  I often rehearse my responses to what I think would be questions from my bosses so that I do not appear to be always without an intelligent answer.  It hasn’t worked so far, in part due to my ineptness to speculate the correct questions which would be asked.  Maybe one day I will eventually get lucky.

And by the way, my dogs do answer me when I talk to them although strictly speaking, not in the conventional way of talking.  After spending so much time with them, I have become quite good at reading their non-verbal cues.  Dogs are not labelled men’s best friends for nothing.

A Social Animal, Not!

I am not a social animal.  Whatever that term means to you, I am likely the epitome of the antithesis.  This is by no means an exaggeration – I have, on numerous occasions, chosen the company of my 3 golden retrievers, good books or Korean drama series over social gatherings.  For some inexplicable reason, social gatherings wear me out so.  And that’s because I’m an introvert through and through.

At this juncture, I would like to recommend ‘An Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World’ written by Marti Olsen Laney.  If you are a fellow introvert, you must be able to identify with the inadequacies I feel as an introvert trying to excel in a corporate world that values extroverted characteristics over introverted sensitivities.  Oftentimes I feel so wearisome going against the social norms while trying to prove that an introvert has its place in this world.

Not so anymore.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will always not be able to provide witty or good answers when my bosses turn to me for my two cents’ worth during meetings.  I’m no less adequate than the rest, but I am decidedly different in that I require time to think it through before I could regurgitate something clever.

Did you know that out of 10 persons, 7 are extroverts and only 3 are introverts?  With this statistical backing, it is little wonder introverts find it hard to listen to their inner compass amidst the cacophony.

Introverts of the world, unite!