expectations

I've been thinking a lot about expectations, the expectations I have for other people or for myself and what everyone else expects from me. A lot of times these expectations aren't communicated well and everyone is left guessing. I feel like I'm at a constant struggle to meet expectations that don't actually exist, not in the way that I perceive them anyway. I feel like I'm always trying to be what everyone wants me to be. I'm even trying to be what the Internet wants me to be when I blog or post something on facebook. It's kind of weird to think that the Internet has expectations from me, and that I have to shape myself to fit its mold. But isn't it true? Rather than just being myself, I'm always trying to be what I want all of the anonymous voyeurs of my life want me to be. I don't know exactly who you are, but I know you are watching me through the Internet. This is slightly unnerving. Hopefully I like you and wouldn't mind you looking in to my life, but you're essentially faceless to me. I think it would be slightly different to be a real writer with a real following, to not know the people who look in to my life, but I know most of you. Granted it does make things easier to say once what I'm doing and how I'm doing instead of calling each individual I know on facebook, but I'd almost rather do that. Why don't you call me sometime? I'd love to hear from you.

It's just so odd to me that I know so many people that flow in and out of my life, that communication has become so much more easy, and as a result I have become more and more reclusive. I have a total of 4 friends right now who I spend time with on a regular basis, who I don't feel weird about calling. I'm pretty sure before facebook that I had at least 6. But when I blog, when I twitter, when I say something on facebook, I'm only talking to myself. No one is around to receive immediately what I am saying. I'm talking in to space and hoping someone will comment on what I say, will acknowledge my existence. I want a dialogue. I don't want to participate in this one-sided conversation. I can be very shy by nature; if I'm not in just the right mood I don't want to talk to anyone, and so I usually had to force myself to be around people. Now I don't, and so I slip into a quiet introverted existence, but really I just want to talk to you.

I went to a dance concert last night, and I loved it. I used to really hate what seemed to be as arbitrary and ridiculous body movements found in modern dance, but now I really get into the expressive power of the human body. My friend who came with me told me that she was jealous that these people spend all day moving their bodies at school when she is forced to sit at a computer all day. I feel the same way. I want to be more aware of and in control of my body and I want to use it more than as a house for my brain and a set of hands to do the typing. But I don't have to, so I don't. Exercise is a chore, a boring tedious chore, and I always do better when I'm actually using my body. When I'm busy and have to walk and stand and work for hours on end. That's when I feel healthy. I think my body was made for another time and place. I have tremendously muscled legs, and I'm built big and strong and hardy. Perfect for a farm or something. But here in this world I don't meet up to the expectations of the society I live in to be small and lean. I'm just not either of those things, and so I have to redefine the expecations I have for myself and forget about the world I live in and what they want me to be. That's hard to do, but I can't see myself happy and satisfied any other way.

Anyway, I feel like I'm always trying to fool the world and the people in it. I can't let them know of my faults or they won't like me. I can't let the internet see me write something stupid, I can't let the boy I like more than other boy know that I like him, I can't let people see that I never wear matched socks, that I don't care about the clothes I wear as much as I'd like to because I'm lazy, or that I secretly long for someone to just hold my hand I'm twenty five for heaven's sake.
Of course there's a solution to this, but I'm tired of trying to come up with solutions to everything, to say that I'm too good to care about what the world thinks and that what I think is the only thing that matters and all that other bullshit. We all define ourselves by expectations, we measure ourselves against what we want and what we have or don't have, and I'll probably keep doing it. Maybe someday I'll be who you want me to be, and maybe I'll be who I want me to be. Either way I don't know if that someday is in my lifetime.