Today I wanted to give insight on how I see myself. There are only two aspects I am going to talk about because I’m sure telling you all of them would be boring and I have to keep the mystery alive somehow!
The first one is a bit more on the good side in my opinion. Even though I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life, I see myself as a positive person. Yes, I do appreciate self deprecating humor but I don’t see that as making me negative. It’s like appreciating jokes about Americans, it’s funny because as an American you are a part of the group being made fun of but you also know how true it is. No one has to deal with Americans more than Americans and no one has to deal with Ashley more than Ashley. I think in general I have a dry sense of humor that can be sarcastic. My best friend on the other hand is the wittiest person I have ever met and I am blown away at how she can come up with stuff on the fly that is comedy gold.
Back to the topic at hand, I consider myself a positive person because I don’t like being around a lot of negativity. In this situation negativity isn’t dealing with sadness or worry but more about spite, rudeness, and meanness. It’s okay to be in a bad place and have negative emotions but it is hard for me to be around people that are perpetually negative or mean for little to no reason at all. The way I see it, if you are being negative about something you can’t change, why dwell on it for too long. If you can do something about it, then work through it.
I try to have good morals and focus on ways to grow and positively improve my character. I try to be open with admitting when I don’t know something so I can learn and not let my pride speak for me. In a situation where you get defensive about not knowing something all it does is put you on edge and make the situation tense and awkward. People don’t mind telling someone how to do things generally.
I try to be nice to all people, which is something that we all should be doing so if you aren’t it’s time to shape up. It sucks when people talk bad about someone who they haven’t even bothered to talk to or try to take the high road and act like they are morally superior for no good reason. Even people that I actively don’t like I am civil with because they are people with the same range of feelings as me. This is not to say that I’m unwilling to tell someone off, but we all know where we draw the line and I draw the line when a person’s actions impact someone else, for example if someone was being loud in a library I may roll my eyes but I don’t plan on saying anything to them so I get over it and deal with it or move spots. There would be no reason to be rude at the perceived slight of them being loud so if someone was to shit talk them I would start to get annoyed.
I also like to enjoy the small things in life. A small thing that I love is walking across the bridge that connects the two sides of my college campus over a five lane road. I like crossing it in the early morning when the sun is low and I think I can see the chill in the air. With music on, I watch the cars pass by and visually try to line the center of the road up with my vision, pretending it is a camera taking a picture. Some days my picture has less cars, or has frost, or is focused on the horizon. It’s a strange little ritual but I already know I will miss it down the road.
The second way that I see myself is that I am wildly introspective. This is good and bad, really. I am worried about coming off as selfish and vain for thinking about myself all the time and naturally I talk about myself quite a bit. I will say, I can be an excellent listener. I love dissecting what I am thinking about or feeling which makes it easy to spend time with myself without distractions. I know who I am as a person and parts that I don’t have a definite answer for I am aware of.
A downside is that I dwell on things that I have found to be true which does not help my self-conscious issues. For example, I am self-conscious about talking about myself so when I talk about my accomplishments I sell myself short to try and mitigate appearing selfish or spoiled even though it’s not the case. I am not afraid to talk about the things I think and do which makes it a strange combination to say the least. I feel like a walking contradiction at times.
I see being introspective as being a good logical practice. It can help people reason through a problem and take a look at it from a different way and weighing the pros and cons of the problem. It can show you assets and flaws you have letting you know where you need to spend time developing your character.
There are so many upsides of being introspective that I am not delving into but I wanted to set the stage for my next post that being introspective helped me learn and what I am doing about it.
See you next time!
Ashley Grace 