It’s funny how many people, including Yours Truly, spend the majority of their lives trying to be like someone else, to assimilate and merge. Some succeed very easily in fitting into the worldly standard – being fit, wearing fashionable clothes and makeup “on fleek”, finding a romantic partner, having a “respectable” albeit often boring white-collar job, having children, taking them to school, watching TV in the evenings, going out with friends on a Friday night for drinks – you know the sort of life I am talking about. And there’s nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, many of those things are good things in themselves. The problem is that they are pinnacled as the only possible standard of worldly bliss and anyone who isn’t able or doesn’t’ want to have this kind of life is left feeling that they are somehow lesser or, plainly speaking, weird.
I remember a period of my life when I originally started writing this post and I was nearly in panic because I was afraid that I was becoming more and more “standard” in the sense I just described. I was becoming “worldly” in a sense that for me was almost unbearable. As someone who has always hated routine and had a great longing for creativity and adventure, it has been rather hard for me when I just graduated from University and took up a very much routine receptionist job at a hotel. I always thought that I wanted to be “normal”, “standard”, but when I actually settled into this routine and abandoned my creativity for a while, I became very scared. My plans to go to drama school at that stage seemed unreal to me and I wasn’t passionate about anything else enough to put in all the hard work most fields require. Therefore, it started seeming to me that being a receptionist or a manager and abandoning my creativity and sense of adventure is what my life was heading towards now. I know many people to whom “holidays” means going to some warm country and spending all their time lying next to a Hotel pool instead of going around and seeing crumbling old churches, beautiful narrow streets, breath-taking nature and meeting other like-minded creative and spiritual people. Again, I feel that there is nothing wrong with people who take the opposite stance from me, the problem is that people with one type of lifestyle in our society are made an ideal, and others, artists, nerds, spiritual, and many other types of people are made to feel like they are lacking if they don’t purse this media lifestyle, even if it’s not what they truly want. They’re marginalized in the most subtle way but it hurts them and their inner artist child to the point of wanting to give up their dreams and become someone they’re not.
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Even now that I’m learning to embrace my individuality and quirkiness, I still struggle to be myself when I put on my work uniform. I look at myself in a mirror and I don’t see myself. I see a receptionist. I guess I always found a lot of my self-expression in the clothes that I’m wearing and I feel that every time I put on my black receptionist’s dress I suddenly feel and behave as a whole another person. But it’s not me. I struggle with appreciating my true identity, I struggle with loving and appreciating my “differentness”, yet my soul was clearly not made for this “standard” life. Maybe one day I’ll find enough people like me to make me feel less alone in this world and we will start a little quirky revolution.
Eve x
Nice. Curating for my tribe. Your receptionist position is just another “role” if you’ll embrace it. Act as the best receptionist you possibly can be. At the end of the day, take off the receptionist garb and take up your own mantle once more. You’re situation changes you’re thinking only if you let it.
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Thanks for reading! To be honest, the problem is that as a sensitive type I can identify with any role too much, to an extent that I start thinking that the role is who I really am. Especially if I have to take up this role five days a week. Interesting point of view though!
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I absolutely hate wearing formal clothes. When I was at University, commuting and saw these people on trains, they looked one and the same and just…boring. Now you are the same, merging. I hate the feeling, a good hoodie and jeans just make me feel more me than trying to fit into the picture that is an office worker – so grey! I guess you’re right, you gotta be quirky wherever you can be. Great post!
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Very true, glad you get what I’m trying to say 🙂 However, I guess in life sometimes you can’t escape the situations where you just have to dress to a certain standard and still remain yourself, perhaps even make the uniform your own even if just with your personality. Thanks!
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Whoa, the image looks amazing and unreal! Is it a painting by any chance?
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Haha no not at all, it’s a picture that one guy who’s really good at photography took at my friend’s birthday party ☺
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That’s really nice, please convey him my compliments. I liked the views you shared about embracing our quirkiness, I reckon we all need to do that. ^-^
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Yes we do! 🙂 thanks ^^
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If quirky means non-conforming, well I’ve done that all my life and have no intention of stopping now! Be yourself, be true to yourself and stand out from the crowd. True we all have to “act the part” from time to time, like in your job, but there are always small, subtle ways to stand out as an individual!
Dookes
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That’s true ☺ I found that personally I’m also usually more attracted to/ interested in people who stand out from the crowd. I guess quirkiness attracts quirkiness haha x
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I prefer to call it individuality, the world is becoming too full of stereotyped clones for my liking…dare to be different!
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