Stop laughing.
I've been thinking about my future, my goals, my present, my money concerns, and my attitude towards it all.
I'm a big fan of self deprecation jokes, as clearly evidenced above. When people ask me how I'm doing it all, or how much they admire my work ethic, I laugh it off, attempting to make myself the butt of a joke.
That's all well and good, but today, I began to think differently.
I ran into an old high school friend, and he greeted me, asked me how I was, and I jokingly responded "I'm tired."
His quick reply was "You look happy."
Now for those of you who Facebook stalk me, you're already aware of one of my immediate conclusions to this, which was to agree, but I got to thinking...
Why do I constantly put myself down like that? Why do I brush off my accomplishments? Why am I making something so important to me such a joke?
I think part of it has to do with the fact that when you start talking about yourself, even if you are proud of something you've done, society tells you not to brag.
Well I'm not trying to brag, I just want to talk about my happiness about how well I've done. Society then tells us no, you can't be happy you're not allowed to be happy, because someone else in the world isn't happy either.
When you go against something that is a convention (Convention is a fancy new word I learned in my political science class, which is basically an expected norm governed by political rule, meaning if you don't follow it, you are punished politically. Here I mean it in the terms of a societal convention.) in modern society, you hesitate to stomp all over it for fear of the repercussions. The repercussions here is that no one will like you, nor will they talk to you.
Some people may think that those who have been bullied in their childhood (like me) think they develop the defense mechanism of just not caring what others think, but for many of us, it couldn't be farther than the truth.
I'm now aware that I don't talk myself up because I don't want people to stop talking to me, even if I don't like them. I know now that I make jokes at my expense when someone brings up one of my successes, or my apparently prodigious (Digimon reference insert here) work ethic because I don't want them to feel like I'm belittling them or making them feel less.
"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else." ― Henry Ward Beecher
I have this quote above my desk because it helps me continue to try to do even better, to push myself to more extremes. I continue to make fun of my accomplishments, but what I'm doing are just that, accomplishments.
Everything I have worked to has taken a great deal of effort on my part, and frankly, I think it's about time I start patting myself on the back. I can be as harsh a mistress as I would like, but it's about time I reward myself as well.
Because I'm happy, gorramn it! And I hope that you, reader, are doing something that makes you proud of yourself at least once every day.
Today's accomplishment: Allowing myself some much needed downtime. Reward? CHOCOLATE! *noms*
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