Five Misconceptions About Me

Sorry I couldn't come up with a cool acronym...

...as straightforward as I am, I think I'm funny in that sometimes certain parts of my personality shine at the expense of others. For that reason (and also to buy myself time as I work on another piece and lament the loss of my flash drive, which had a good 3-4 already finished pieces on it), I'll present five common misconceptions about me. I have a strange feeling these may have a common theme - no, I don't know what I'm going to write yet. I never do. It's more fun that way. Matter of fact, let's start with that.




1. I have to plan everything out.

Key word in here is "everything". I like to have a lot of things planned out, but oddly enough there's one area in which this is patently false: dating/relationships. As I've mentioned other places, I'm really into the idea of just spending time with someone intended. Problem is that many women like men to make decisions and all that. They consider a general willingness to be with them a link to ambivalence, which they link to inability to make decisions...which is a morass of nonsense.

Even in more general terms, I don't know what I'm doing two hours from now. Might stay here, might go grocery shopping, might hit a club the next county over. Who knows. Staying in is winning right now, but I think I do need to shop. Anyway, I'm not the rigid person people think I am...although I'll admit I am pretty close. I think the better people know me, the easier time they'll have seeing what I'm saying.

2. I like being single.

When I first started writing non-football notes on FB, one of the very first things I said was that single life is not the business and that anyone who says otherwise is lying. I was six months out (or thereabouts) when I said it then, as opposed to being three years out now. I still believe it, even though I haven't really been anywhere close to changing my status. I'm just more patient now and much less willing to compromise my discriminatory nature. All the fun tweets from the clubs are cool and all, but I'd rather not write a one because...

3. ...I'd rather spend a Saturday night at home.

I just have an aversion to doing that alone. If I spend a Saturday night at home, something is wrong. I may be sick or...well, I could just be watching WWE replays on Universal. It wasn't that long ago that I said I wasn't going out anymore on Saturdays due to the replays. Strange thing happened: the clubs got better and the replays (obviously, I mean the originals) got worse. Back to the point: I'd much rather spend a Blockbuster - Netflix now, I guess - night with someone than hit the club. Shoot, I have a decent sound system and 80% of the club songs anyway. I can turn this place into a restaurant, a club, a movie theater...there's a park right across the street...but alas, sitting here on a Saturday night is not the business. That applies at home too.

4. I like living in Tallahassee.

I think quite a few people know this is false. First real opportunity I have to leave, I'm gone. That said, I have loose ends to tie before I skip out of here. People think I like it because I've been here so long, but the funny thing about this place is that being here too long stunts your personal growth. I felt it happening when I finished undergrad and even though I knew I was leaving anyway, the feeling that I had to leave was that much stronger. This place is too small, too Republican (whoever says this place is Democratic is a liar), and too focused on the college-age population (in terms of social options: there are other ways in which the city pretty much screws the students). I thought I'd be here two more years, but I keep having this feeling that timetable's going to be moved up.

5. I'm mean.

Some people think this because of something that happened three and a half years ago. Some people think this because of things that happened much further back in the past. This is the one misconception I'd like to clear up. I'm not a mean person. Like anyone else I'd rather not be tried or disrespected, and I'm not nice when treated in that way. Outside that, I think I'm one of the nicest people one could meet. People always say or note that I have these mean and/or disapproving looks on my face as if I'm always drinking out of a mean mug. I see this most often when women bump into me at the club (yes, it happened last night) and they almost look like I'm going to hit them - which is the absolute furthest thing from the truth, as anyone who knows me at all knows.

As I think I've mentioned, I'd be much nicer to women in particular if I thought things would go over well. Case in point: one of the women I work with had a really nice pair of shoes on the other day. I wanted to compliment her on them, but 1) I work at a law firm, so I'm not mentioning anything about aesthetics to anyone, 2) such a compliment would probably sound weird coming from a man, and 3) I think people think I like her already (which is false - she's attractive, just not to me). In the case of random women, I don't need anyone thinking I'm trying to talk to them or offer anything (Chris Rock reference from Bigger and Blacker)...or worse yet, come with some insult. Some headaches I could just as soon do without.

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Hmm...maybe I'm not mean, just distrusting - and I could see how looks of distrust could be considered as mean. This is an odd, but welcome bit of self-discovery that I've had writing the dating order piece and this one. I'll have to think about this a bit.