Gift from the IPod gods: Hoot by Okay- "I don't give a hoot no more...I could be home asleep with my lover, I could be home feelin' alright" I think this is the new anthem of the Cubicle Dweller. I might just put it on Repeat.
As anyone who follows me on Twitter can attest, I am a Very
Weird Person. Frankly, I don’t think I possess a normal bone in my body. But
guess what, I’m totally and completely fine with that. And you should be to.
(Not fine with my weird, necessarily. You should be fine with
YOUR weird.)
One of my first boyfriends ever, made an offhand comment once
that I was weird. I made the mistake of trying to offer some sort of weird
apology for being weird. (I mean this was in Junior High, where everyone
strives for sameness to the extreme. We all bought the same brand of jeans for
crying out loud!)
But he set me straight. He cut me off mid-apology and said, “Weird
is Good.” Like it was the simplest, most obvious truth in the world. And it stuck with
me. I never felt the need to apologize for my weirdness ever again. I simply sought
out other people who appreciated my Weird.
And guess what else I discovered in my travels? Writers Are a
Weird Bunch.
Writers Think Weird Thoughts and sometimes even Write Them Down!
Writers tend to be on the fringes of society. It’s a common side effect of
independent thought. We don’t think like everyone else. We don’t act like
everyone else. We didn't necessarily fit in in High School. We don’t
always do well in social situations. We sometimes laugh out loud at the irony
of situations outside of our control. (Sometimes at wildly inappropriate times) "Mainstream" society makes us twitch. Conformity makes us itchy in strange places. We question everything. We take nothing for granted. We get on each others’
nerves. We antagonize. We agonize.
We are flawed. We are wonderful. We are Weird.
And we should wear our Weirdness with pride. It’s what makes us
better writers. Our experiences. Our perspective. Sure we may be different, but
that uniqueness is our biggest ally. Use it. Foster it. Milk it. (Yes, I just
told you to Milk your Weird…and that’s not weird AT ALL!) Some of the best writers,
and for that matter artists of all stripes, have been very odd cookies. If we all
thought exactly the same there would only be one book in existence and it would
be titled “How to Be a Happy Clone” and we all would have read it and loved it
and given it five stars on Goodreads. (And yes, in this scenario there’s still a
Goodreads, even though it only has one book on it)
Don’t try to be something you’re not. Your own voice is
wonderful. Use it. And if someone doesn’t like it, don’t worry, there are
approximately 7 Billion people on the planet, chances are at least one of them
will “totally get what you were trying to say”. All you Weird Writers out
there feeling isolated in your weirdness, you are not alone, and neither are the 6,999,999,999 other weird people
out there.
Come on, I dare you, leave a comment. Share your Weird with the
World! What makes you Weird? What makes you Wonderful? What don’t we know about
you that we really,really should?
Posts
This was a wonderful post! Thanks for sharing! (I love your tweets, they are awesome!)
ReplyDeleteI TOTALLY think you're weird. But I love Every Weird thing about you...because I'm a little weird, myself.
ReplyDeleteAnd I love your use of random Capitalization throughout this post. See? It's things like that, which is why you and I - yeah, we're definitely friends. Maybe it's just everyone else that is strange?
Great post, K. Great Post.
My favorite fridge magnet says "The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well." My weird student said she didn't think I was weird but she was sure some other students do because I'm not like all the other teachers. I'll take that. High five. Werd for weird.
ReplyDeleteThe best gift I gave myself was to allow myself to be weird. It's what gives us our individuality when the rest of the world strive to BAAA! :) A "normal" friend of mine told me I needed to stop telling my son that he's not sheep. I think it's the best advice that I can give him. Go out there, and be weird, because you are being you. He's 12 and in 8th grade. He's the youngest of the class, an aspiring writer and movie director, so he stands out... a lot. But I think it's great, even if sometimes the attention is not positive. It helps reinforce what I tell him, be yourself, there's no shame in that. Be ashamed when you stop thinking for yourself and start going with the flow. Ya know, this is why I love salmon. ;)*coughs*
ReplyDelete