Praise and Blame

Thursday, September 10, 1998
One year ago: Curious Mixture

I am so late with my one web task that really needs to be done on time, the updating of the Seattle Cacophony Society site. And we have an event this Sunday morning! I meant to come home earlier from the Russian Center, where I take lindy hop lessons, but I was having too much fun to leave! My friend Jon Newman showed up. I hadn't seen him for a while, and was catching him up on stuff, when I said, "I'd only share this with you-- Oh, I forgot, I put it in my journal!" We howled with laughter! "Share with me and a zillion people on the web, you mean!" he said. But there are details of my life that I'd only tell a close friend, I swear!

At the beginning of the summer, when Jon had to stop doing dance class, he said he wasn't sure if he'd pick it up again in the fall. But now he is taking class two nights a week, though not the same ones I'm in. We agreed that dancing is addictive! His dancing has improved, too. We had a great time tonight! I also danced with Keith, who is visiting Seattle from Corvallis, Oregon, and a few other new folks.

I talked with Dan Osborn about recent criticism he's gotten about his Lindyhype site, and did actually think of an improvement he could make. Sometimes he adds things to various pages, reviews and reports and such, and I know he has anchors for those additions because he links to them from his Breaking News page. But if I want to link to them, I need to hunt around the site, or view source! I asked him to have a little TOC at the top of such pages, to improve the navigation, and he thought that was a good idea, since he'd been keeping a text file with the anchors to help his authoring!

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I got some good comments on my "bravery" topic from Tuesday.

My friend Kirsten said:

I would say that I consider you brave as well, and, for me at least, the spin you put on it isn't really that applicable. I mean, I think you're brave for your outgoing nature -- for example, the time when we were in that coffee shop and another woman was there and we thought she was supposed to be with us but we didn't know. I felt it was brave (yet, simultaneously, in character) for you to go over and talk to her while I played the weenie. I think that this attitude is what people refer to -- you have a certain fearlessness in your approach to life; you do things that other people want to do but don't quite have the nerve. Even organizing the cacophony events -- I mean, that's something I can relate to, but it's clear to me that a lot of people aren't brave enough to do that kind of stuff either. Perhaps you underestimate the degree to which other people are crippled by their fears.

The issue isn't that you are compensating for some big unusual problem or handicap but that you surely must in some degree possess the problems and handicaps that the rest of us do (shyness, fear of misinterpretation, desire to be accepted) and you don't let them prevent you from doing stuff nearly as much as most people seem to.

Another friend wrote to me:

I think of you as brave, but I don't think of you as brave for overcoming some handicap or obstacle, unless the handicap is the normal one of slowing down and getting into the rut of the familiar. Hmmm. I think that may be it: most of us -- well, all the people I have experience being -- were ready to try all sorts of things in our twenties and early thirties. I was. Once I found a sufficiently large collection of things I liked doing and people I liked doing them with, my spontaneity index went way, way down. Now I think I'm usually too complacent about my life, too inclined to just go on doing the same things I already know I like, too lazy to try things I might like as I would have ten or fifteen years ago, too much in need of more sleep. Perhaps I shouldn't think of you as brave, but as having more stamina than I do.

Of course, life has made me try a whole bunch of new things recently, and I seem to be handling them reasonably well. Mostly. I think of me as brave, too.

And a reader, Gene, wrote:

You talked about people admiring other folks for doing "ordinary" things. I understand what you're trying to say, but I think you're misunderstanding what people mean when they say things like, "I really admire the way you can just walk into a crowd of strangers and start a conversation."

The thing is that they are NOT admiring you for something which they consider an ordinary, everyday thing. I know, from my own experience, that often other people's perceptions of us are radically different than our own. Many people who are only somewhat familiar with Meyers-Briggs evaluations, for example, frequently express great shock that I am an INTP. "But you're not the slightest bit introverted," they will say, and point to my years in theatre, how I have been XXXX of XXXX, how effortlessly I talk as a panelist at cons, ad nauseum.

And the difference is that they don't understand that a part of me is terrified the entire time I'm up in front of people, that it takes every ounce of strength I have to maintain the extrovert facade, and why I desperately need to downtime alone or with a very small circle of good friends to recharge afterwards. They see it as effortless, and I see it as something that I barely manage to get through.

I think that those who express admiration for your abilitities are not saying that they think you have some sort of disability or liability that you're overcoming, they are saying that they find doing the same thing impossible or nearly so. Other times people are just saying they appreciate you.

It probably doesn't stop the nagging feeling you're having whenever someone says something like that. But I think we should all do what we can to encourage folks to say thank you, compliment each other, and otherwise build each other up.

Wow! Thanks for the feedback, folks! Really, I don't have any problems accepting praise. My character, my body, my mind, tell me how great they all are, and I say "Thanks!" and think it my due. That's why I was a little puzzled by my own discomfort in this area, until I realized what was behind it. Even now, I don't think that people really view me as overcoming a problem in this area.

My second friend, referring to my trying new activities, does hit on something that most folks don't do, and that has done me a lot of good. I have changed my range of activities over the years, and do new stuff. But in some ways I'm very change-averse! I don't like it when people disappear from my scene. Even a new traffic pattern can bug me!