Friday night I went to the symphony and the waffle house with marx-beard,* and it was perfect. . . or, closer to it. I mustered courage to talk about something other than labor organizing, feminism, or philosophy. He told me about his negative-trait-blind parents, and I told him about my big new project to learn how not to scare people.
This is a goal, see; my quest is to travel into Mordor and obtain social skills. No more hiding in my room and eating gram-crackers to avoid roomates; no more running out of, or on, friends; no more mortally offending people and not being able to figure out why. Time to become socially self-sufficient.
So. . . honesty, kindness, and a certain degree of openness, and down the rabbit hole.
* notice how I'm now using clever satirical names for all my friends? It gets better. just wait.
6 comments:
I LOVE YOUR NEW TITLE. Not that the old one was bad in any way, shape, or form. But... you know... I adore just about anything "of doom," courtesy of a certain old roommate, so there you have it.
Clever and satirical? I hope nobody is offended, or cries or anything. If you make somebody cry... um.... I'll probably laugh actually.
I'd still avoid roommates. Not because there is anything wrong with being social, but rather because I only believe in being social if it does not annoy me.
That being said, I find the new name quite amusing. Also, if my word verification had one letter moved in front of another, it would be "lestat", which is irrelevant but interesting.
Also, what kind of graham crackers? Regular? Chocolate? Cinnamon? It's been so long since I've bought graham crackers!
The kind I don't know how to spell. . . Duh. :P
Despite what others may think, I like "How to Win Friends and Influence People." I would argue that it is the one of a very few genuine social awareness books, genuine in the sense that Carnegie flat-out tells you not to be manipulative and a punk. To actually be genuine. Anyway, I appreciated it and it has helped me to have less fights with family members.
Well, I'm glad that it's been of service to you. It seems to have a lot of good ideas. However, I have a hard time with that book for two reasons. First, while constantly exhorting his readers to be genuine, he also CONSTANTLY reminds them of the financial and material rewards of being good with people. I find this creepy.
Second, while he does--as aforementioned--talk a lot about developing a genuine interest in people, and how you have to be genuine for it all to work, there's no real explanation about how to get those genuine desires that you didn't have before.
I've tried the "fake it till you make it" approach on that for a long time. (If he suggested something better that I missed, please let me know.) Happily, I've learned that a lot of people become way more interesting when you give them a chance to come out of their shell. However, I still find generating that "genuine" interest to be exhausting--and, ultimately, unsatisfying.
you want to borrow my copy of "Games people play"? In glancing through, it seems to have a lot of those nuts and bolts you're looking for.
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