Tag Archives: Ordinary people

Ordinary Part 2

So, if being a skinny, rich woman with perfect hair is no longer your aspiration, what is?

I want to be a craftsman.

I admire the Hank Hills and Ron Swansons of the world.
I aspire to be being able to rip up a gross, old carpet and lay a brand, new tiled floor…to get an old Mustang and make it purr like a large, disgruntled kitten…to dislodge the God damn garbage disposal out of anger because that thing has fucked with me for the LAST TIME, tell the guy who tries to help me ‘I know more than you’ as I grab a new one at the store, then return home and install it.

There is this…indescribable beauty, this amazing feeling when I remove a clog from a drain or fix a faucet or install a chandelier or rip up a carpet or paint a room, and there is NOTHING like it. I still revel in the time I was changing my mass air flow sensor in the parking lot of an auto parts store in a skirt and pair of high heels, rejecting the multiple offers of help by the men going in or out of the store because I fucking knew what I was doing and LOVED doing it. Even refilling the salt in the water softener gives me such a sense of pride and victory that doesn’t want to go away for a while.
I take pride in home and car maintenance, and I don’t care how strange that sounds.

I want to reside in a smallish community.

Yes, I’m from New York, and I LOVE New York, but I’ve decided that I no longer want to permanently reside in the city…it’s too much: Too much money for too little, and too many people to maneuver around.
Where I’m residing at the moment is wonderful; if one turns right, there is a bigger intersection a few feet down the road that crosses into a more populous and thriving city with many businesses and stores…turn left, and it enters into my town where the traffic is slow and reasonable, the restauranteurs recognize you, and there are wholesome places, such as an antique store, a local history museum, and plenty of small businesses that the townspeople frequent and adore. Hell, I know where the public access TV station is (only two minutes away from my house…it’s great)!
It’s strange because the hustle and the smell and the entertainment of New York is something I never could imagine being happy without, but the more I experience this lifestyle, the more I love it, especially the part about having a yard…that’s irreplaceable.

I want to be able to work in or provide for my community.

Oh, long commutes…you are ridiculous.
I want to know and/or work within my local ‘tribe,’ being a part of where I live, to contribute. I want to build relationships with the people I work with and for, and be able to get together, knowing that they’re only a few minutes away. I think that people are far too detached from one another AND work too far from home, spending so much of their precious time behind the wheel…it’s a waste of life, time that could be spent with pets and family and friends, and it contributes to our apathy. My mother is a nurse, and when I was a kid, she worked five minutes away from home…it was perfect.

These things sound so ordinary, I know.
Usually, if people are speaking of their aspirations, they’re sky-high and glittery…but that isn’t what does it for me. And maybe my aspirations are boring to the rest of you. I know. But when the neighbor across the street gets into his car with his cup of coffee, dressed and ready for work at 4:30 am, I feel the thrill I imagine others feel when they spot their favorite celebrity stroll the red carpet: It’s incredible.

Ordinary

As I alluded to in my post, ‘The Strangest Kind of Blessing,’ I am completely uninterested in the culture of celebrity; as a matter of fact, I kind of hate it.
Why people fawn over or even ‘love’ people who they’ve never met, or care about people who would never, EVER talk to them is something I don’t understand. There is even a name for such relationships in academia; they call it a ‘parasocial relationship,’ and it happens when one person knows so many things about another, but the object of interest knows nothing of that person and, to be honest, could probably care less about them.

Am I a celebrity hater?
No.
As a matter of fact, I do feel moments of deep respect for a celebrity from time to time, especially with writers or musicians. And I’ll even go so far as to admit that it was a bit cathartic when I shook a well-known musician’s hand, told him that his music meant something to me, then taught him what agoraphobia is upon his asking. There’s only one other person who I’d be interested in having a short conversation with, as I’ve enjoyed his writing, acting, and music composition since I was 14 years old, but even with him, there’d be no goo-goo eyes and nervous titters, because I know that this person doesn’t know me or care about me, and never will.

When you are able to let the fact that these people will never care about you sink in, ignoring all of the magazines, TV shows, and the people around us saying that we should all but worship these people, it clears some give-a-shit room for those who are in our lives…those who DO or WILL care.

I admit that there absolutely WAS a time that I, too, all but worshipped celebrities; it was years ago, but it happened; consequently, it was also a time when I’d never felt worse about myself. I’d ask the universe why I was the weight I was, why I didn’t have money, and why people didn’t think the world of ME and everything that I’d accomplished…why couldn’t I be like THEM? They were obviously doing something right, and therefore were deserving of my love and attention…and jealousy.

I wanted to be skinny and have perfect hair and be rich [fun fact: I had to retype the word ‘rich’ three times because my fingers aren’t used to typing it], and I felt bad about myself when I couldn’t be or have those things…worthless, even.

As I aged, things became different. I value different things, and I’ve essentially shut myself away from that stuff; I prefer cartoons to live-action TV. Seriously, if you were to come into my house at any given moment and the TV is off, if you turn it on, the channel is on ‘Cartoon Network.’
I FUCKING LOVE ‘CARTOON NETWORK.’

…Back to the point.
Two summers ago, I had a week or two off of work, and one of my friends logged into HBOGO on my phone with her account. I love me some vampires, so I spent the week marathoning ‘True Blood.’ After watching that show for a week, I looked in the mirror and thought I was chubby for the first time in a LONG time. The majority of the women they cast in that show are size 0, and I realized that by subjecting myself to those images, even temporarily, that body type (one that I will never have, as I’ve been a size 0 and still didn’t look like them) became the ‘standard’ body type, and it had a significant impact on me. Thankfully, that dysmorphic episode was only temporary, and I snapped out of it.

(Stay tuned for part 2.)