Expectations

I think one of my greatest fears is disappointing someone.

I don't think it in the sense of someone who expects me to be a certain way and I completely end up being the complete opposite of what was expected. I get that a lot actually ("You're so different from what I imagined you to be like!" I never understood that. What do I look like I'm supposed to be?). This is pretty much in terms of my personality and who I come off as, I think. My image, or whatever you want to call it. In the end, I am who I am, and most of the time, I quite like who I am. The weird, quirky, capricious me. My personality, my very being does end up backfiring on me because I can be forgetful, not make connections that are supposed to be made ("When's your birthday again?") and I think it makes it seem like I don't care, but really, I don't care for the rules that tell us that we have to celebrate a person's existence or their awesomeness on a certain day. I do what I feel like. That's just who I am. I'm random. I like being random. That's also how I process life (in bunches, much like picking apples off a tree, rather than in any real logical order, as one would imagine picking apples off an assembly line).

However, I realized that I'm in many ways, very very much afraid of what people expect of me in terms of my skill or what I'm supposed to be good at. So if someone goes to me, "I heard you were really good at math," then it's pretty much guaranteed the next time I'm supposed to show off my math "skills" I will totally and utterly fail them. It's something about that expectation that makes me like freeze or something.

So I prefer it if no one expects anything from me. I'd rather people think me to be idiotic, blind and able to do nothing than have to worry about meeting the expectations people have of me. I suppose it stems from my fear of failure (because I'd be failing to meet those people's expectations) and I think everyone feels that to a certain extent, I just take it to another level. It definitely affects my confidence.

It's an unfortunate vice because I belittle everything I do, yet somewhere in the back of my head, I think I'm right (but then I realize that I can be wrong and what I said could be overturned) so it's this weird duality that doesn't quite seem to reconcile itself. I think that from this stems a lack of desire to be responsible because that means that I must meet someone's expectations to be responsible. :\ Hm.

I don't know. It's something that I need to work on. I am what I am. I am capable of what I am capable of - nothing more, nothing less.

I wonder if that's why I like pursuing music and art - there's no pressure in it because I know I suck and it's established that I suck so no one (including me) expects anything of me.

I suppose it also has to do with working under pressure. I need to work on that too. So it goes.