Wit, Words, and Joie de Vivre

So, this week m_stiefvater had a great post about self-confidence that everyone has been talking about. One thing she mentions is that she just decided to develop self-confidence around 19 or 20 or something.

I kind of did the same thing. Not that I threw a magic confidence switch, but here is a portrait of me at 18: long hair, t-shirts and jeans, shy, quiet, unsure of what I wanted from life. I disappeared into the world of my characters because THEY had awesome lives. I mean, except for being blinded, maimed, and losing family members in horrible ways all the time. Plus some torture and accidental time-traveling and...okay, nevermind. Anyway, they were all well-dressed and fascinating with cool hangouts, cool friends, cool hobbies...

It was shortly after this that I discovered this man:



Hell, even if you don't like David Bowie's looks or his music, you have to admit the dude's had an interesting life. Bowie led me to poke into the lives of more rock stars and then other artists, writers, etc. through history who were characters themselves. Like Tasha Tudor, who loved the 1830s and largely recreated an 1830s life for herself.

It was then I realized that some people ARE characters. And they aren't necessarily born into it. They create it. I wondered why I let my characters have all the fun. I always loved playing dress-up with vintage clothes as a child, but I never wore vintage clothes in public because people around here just don't DO that.

I made a vow to myself, to the soundtrack of "Queen Bitch" and "Virginia Plain", that I would not wait for a reason to dress up. I would not wait for other people to do it. I think this was the moment I came into my own as an adult. I owned who I was. It wasn't just about clothes, even if it started there, it was about realizing I don't have to follow the status quo unless I want to. It means if I want to focus on my writing, skip college and be poor, I don't care if you roll your eyes at me. I'm doing what I want to be doing, not what you want me to be doing.

The only hard part of sticking to my own path was the loneliness. But at that retreat in Savannah, I realized, I am a rock star. I was there in the moment I dreamed of--with my fellow rock stars, brilliant funny free-thinking people with artistic passion. And I'm not sure I would have ever gotten there if I hadn't become a rock star long ago, before hardly anyone believed I was one.

I made a dentist appointment today.

Many people in the world do practical things like make dentist appointments every day. I, however, am not one of those people. If there are two things that scare me (actually, there are MANY more than two, but I digress), they are:

--Making phone calls
--Anything medical

Naturally, making a dentist appointment is an unpleasant combination of those things. Add the fact that you are actually paying money to have these medical things done to you, and you will find me cowering in a closet.

However, practical part of my brain realizes it is a good idea to make a dentist appointment. That it is better, easier, and cheapter in the long run to take care of things now. So practical self and cowering-in-closet self have been arguing on nearly a weekly basis.

Practical Self: "Just call! Then it will be done and you can stop worrying about it! Isn't the worrying far worse than the doing? You want your teeth to fall out of your head? You want to be the writer with no teeth?"
Cowering Self: "Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo."

For some reason, cowering self was the more powerful one of the two for years. Yes, years! However, The Book Deal finally removed a lot of the financial anxiety over the dentist, and that was enough to make the call. It was no means easy, though. I was shaking like a leaf dialing the dang number. But it is done. Now I just have to make it through the appointment. And subsequent dental work. *sigh*