Shit I Think About
Despite presenting as a rather adept social butterfly with apparent ease, I have learned over the years that I do not actually like people. My ideal party takes place in my home with 1–3 friends (who don’t ask stupid, generic questions that require equally stupid and generic responses), cheese and dessert for 6 people, and 1–5 cats and/or dogs. Maybe I don’t hate everyone (yet), but people are definitely exhausting.
At the very least— I don’t like the feeling of being trapped in a social situation, because I lack the very useful, anti-social skills of walking away from meaningless conversations— without preamble and without guilt— or slipping out of a social gathering— unnoticed— too soon after arriving to it (incidentally, my mother and my partner are both great at those skills. Unfortunately— in the case of my partner’s smooth exits from human run-on sentences—I am often left to fend for myself with someone who will neither break eye contact nor take a breath). I am also not a fan of the amount of time it takes me to compose a succinct and respectful response to an entitled, adult brat who did not extend the same self-aware courtesy and who deserves an unfiltered talking-to. In spite of the exasperation these draining social encounters illicit in my soul, I often feel inspired to write about the things that go through my head while they are happening.
That very round about introduction exists because I couldn’t very well start with, “When I was in grad school,” and expect anyone to keep reading (I learned that in grad school). But anyway— when I was in grad school, I took a class called, “Writing for Digital Media,” in which I was asked to keep a blog (among other digital media-related things). For one of the first lessons about proper/successful blogging I had to create a title and description for my hypothetical blog. I can’t remember the exact description I wrote, but it was basically a classroom-appropriate version of “Shit I Think About,” to which my professor responded— “Who on Earth would want to read that?”
In spite of the exasperation these draining social encounters illicit in my soul, I often feel inspired to write about the things that go through my head while they are happening.
Perhaps she was right— maybe she wasn’t. In any case, I am no longer being graded (I attained my M.S. in Professional Writing, and I now live in a comfortable shanty— with my partner and 3 cats — on top of a mountain of debt from NYU), and I don’t care if truthfully describing a blog as “the shit I think about,” doesn’t get me a sponsorship from an organic, self-cleaning cat litter company. Personally, I love reading the shit other people think about, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume there are other weirdos who share my interests and want to listen to me gripe.
I have spent money (that should probably go towards my ever-accruing student loan interest) on personal memoirs and collections of personal essays by celebrities and by people I’d never heard of before reading in detail about the secret life of their genitals. I find it comforting to see my own crazy openly shared by someone else who is— apparently— the same kind of crazy. Or to see my anger and frustration neatly packaged and articulated by someone in a way that might actually be listened to and heard. I am awed by the candor of authors who share the most embarrassing — and embarrassingly relatable— moments of their lives with the world, and I wonder if they feel relieved or 7.7 billion times more mortified.
While I don’t know that I’ll ever bare my soul in its potentially embarrassing entirety, I do enjoy writing for my own enjoyment, and I am going to write whatever I feel like writing. So I give you— Shit I Think About— featuring the shit I think about. I invite you to not read it, or to read it if you want to.
