No.5 - Conscious of Others

I try not to be too conscious of what others might think, but it is definitely challenging for me.

Though some may not believe given how clueless and tired I look most of the time (...), I'd say I am pretty good at reading the room; most of the time, I know what's going on in my surrounding, I just never have enough energy or interest in it to call it out. My intuitions are usually right, to the extent where it scares me sometimes.

Sometimes I would ask the person later in public to establish that "oh nooo I am a clueless person that had no idea what is going on" while I was probably one of the first people to sense it. I KNOW people say "oh why didn't you say it earlier then, you're just trying to act like you know everything when in reality you really don't," but I try to act like I don't know what's going on to prevent accidentally spreading any information that the person doesn't want it to be spread. Though I may be on my phone with my AirPods on, chronically on Spotify 24/7, I think I am quite attentive to the conversation - even if I am not particularly taking a part in it.

I remember what this is called, I think I try to play it dumb around people.

Anyway, I'm not too sure if being able to read people pretty well has given me any advantages in my life.
(Since 7th-8th was quarantine let's just dive straight to high school)

9th grade - Insane levels of social anxiety and self doubt
I was barely able to hold conversations coming out of quarantine. I remember literally blacking out in front of my history class during the French Revolution group project, being told that they couldn't hear me because of my quiet voice + loud ventilation noise. On the first day of Biology Honors, the teacher told us to say hi to our partners and tell them what we did over the summer. I said hi. my partner didn't hear me. Anxiety kicks in, I say hi again. He finally hears me but rapidly closes the conversation. Anxiety grows even bigger. Later he told me that he never heard me say hi from the first place (bruh). Barely made any new friends and stayed in my comfort zone.

10th grade - anxiety gets better, but still couldn't do anything without a friend :cope:
I remember in New Testament Studies I got placed into the worst seating: friend's opp on the left and friend's past crush on the right. Worst class ever for the first few months, but it got better as I made friends with a few people in the class.

10th to 11th grade summer - had nothing to do this summer, ended up exploring the entire city of Seoul alone
Since I - fortunately or unfortunately - have no friends in Korea, I was forced to spend time alone. Genuinely had so much fun, went to all sorts of places and I think I got to overcome some of my social anxiety because I didn't have anyone to help me with talking to strangers.

Why did I even write this part??

My point is that because (I think) I can read people and the general atmosphere of the room pretty easily, I got more and more conscious of what people may think of me. I kept trying to convince myself that I am simply overthinking and no one cares about me that much, but the slight possibility that my intuition may not be wrong kept on bothering me and my life.

This is kind of a double standard on my side but playing dumb around others give some sense to them that I may not be too socially aware of everything, allowing them to be able to be more open with themselves. But I genuinely do mean it when I say "I forgot," because I really do have a goldfish memory except for some certain things like people's birthdays and the most minutely important things in this world such as the fact that unsaturated fats have a kink and thats why they don't stack on top of each other, being easier to burn than saturated fats (which don't have kinks). This is why saturated fats aren't good kids.

Anyhow, as much as this helps me with my life and being able to avoid some uncomfortable situations (such as getting someone to get pissed at you because you kept on making fun of them not knowing that the person is pissed, haha), it gets really tiring to manage my mind away from the fact that people out there may also be able to recognize other people's thoughts and feelings easily like me.

I think the key solution to this problem is the "who gives a fuck" mindset. I recall the instance in 7th grade when I had to write an email to my intro to photography teacher for him to update my grade, and I got so worried that my email would sound rude. Until that moment, I asked my old best friend A to proofread my email before I sent it to my teachers. But this time, A, instead of giving a positive feedback, she told me, "they probably will read it in 2 seconds and reply with a "sent from my iPhone" anyways, just send it I don't think anyone cares enough to yell at your 2 sentence long email." This honestly really hit me, especially because I was always so self-conscious of whatever I did back then. It was only my first year I lived in the States, which means I was very worried whether what I say is grammatically wrong. I was so conscious of my pronunciation too that every night I read books out loud to "fix" my pronunciation and get rid of the slight Korean accent I had. Keeping this in mind, I will be progressing my life trying to care about what others may think to the least extent.

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catching up with my uploads.
5/100 days