Shout out to the folks that don't have a good sense of their own personal interests. This one's for you.
The following blog post is brought to you by the following experience that I recently had:
Stranger: What do you like to do for fun?
Me: *internal panic*
Stranger: *stares*
Me: I...watch a lot of Buffy?
A lot of the human existence is based on categorizing things. People like to put what they experience into categories to better understand how they relate to the experience, and to explain it with clarity to others. This relation to various experiences helps to define the person. Or thing. An example could be restaurants; they're sorted by categories like Italian, Korean, French, Japanese, Lebanese, etc. I've yet to go to a restaurant where the menu is literally the chef's favorite foods from whichever styles they like.
That actually be pretty awesome. Someone should do that. But, like, at a better cuisine level than, say, TGI Fridays. Just saying.
Then you've got some experiences that can't be put in a box. You can fill in the blanks. I'm not really getting into it because I don't think that I'm the appropriate mouthpiece and I don't want to speak for others. Let's go to some simpler concepts.
For example, a while ago I saw these beautiful photos featuring The Jungle Book cast along with the animals that they portrayed. They were beautiful and dark and theatrical and I thought, "Gosh, I really want to see this movie." Last month, I saw the movie poster for The Jungle Book while seeing a different film with my sister and I thought, "Yeah, that movie looks sweet. I wanna see it." And then, last week, my boss told me about how he went to see The Jungle Book with his kids, his love for The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and how he's seen the animated film with his kids, like, 500 times. He can sing all the songs. I didn't test him. Probably should have.
Yesterday, I caught myself thinking, "Wow, I wonder who I can ask to see The Jungle Book with me."
What's up with that!?
Why do I need a buddy to go see a movie?
What's going to happen if no one else is interested? Am I not going to go?
Honestly...past experiences have indicated that this would be the case.
Which is dumb. I know for a fact that I love going to see movies in theaters. I love carcinogenic movie theater popcorn. I love looking at posters from films long ago. I love watching the trailers and getting so engrossed in the vignette style of story-telling that, if done well enough, I forget what I originally sat down to see. I love enjoying the movie for what it is and losing myself in the screen. It's escapism at its finest. I'm about that.
And, yeah. You can watch movies at home. Netflix makes it pretty easy. But there's something about going to the theaters and having the experience that I really enjoy.
I thought about this dilemma, missing out on fun activities because I didn't have a friend to go with, for a couple of days and thought about all the experiences that I missed out on because I was too uncomfortable to go by myself. And I was like, "Why is this?"
And then I realized it.
It's because, unless someone else validates my choices, I force myself to lose interest in the thing that I originally thought was cool.
Holy shit.
What!!
That's super messed up!
And then some puzzle pieces clicked together and I was like, "Huh. That explains why I don't know what my interests are besides reading, dogs, science, and goofy television."
Well. Something's gonna have to change around here and it's gonna be me.
I've been working on slowly branching out into some unknown waters. I go on short adventures with my pup and we explore the green areas of Boston. I'm testing out rock climbing this week (with a friend - that one was a bit too daunting to do by myself). I'm handling my quarter-life crisis by trying to answer the question: what does Mara really like?
So yeah. This Friday, I've got a date with myself. We're going to the movies.
