slef aware

On 5 Mar 2012, at 22:38, Stacey Teague wrote:

was just thinking about how you said that you realised you didn't know yourself like you thought you did, now that you have moved to a different country. i think this is because we let the things/people around us shape who we are, like having those things/people around affirms who we are and the fact that you are away from those things/people means you lose part of yourself via putting so much of yourself into those things/people. this came as a sort of revelation to me in the shower but i suppose it is fairly obvious. when i am sitting in my room with all of my possessions and comforts, i feel the luxury of being/knowing myself. since i still live in the town i was born in, there is a sense of familiarity everywhere i go. i've left parts of myself and my memories all over this city. that is fine i suppose, but we need to go somewhere else so that we can discover who we are when we are not being defined by external things.

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:23 AM, Susie Anderson wrote:

it seems weird to me to live in the same town where you were born, but we were born in v different places. i guess i would feel different about melbourne if i had been born there. it'd be nice to think i'd still love it as much as i do having only lived there ~4 years. the thing is, it's a really nice feeling to be able to create a new sense of familiarity, discovering things, but also to still be able to be surprised by somewhere.

the thing i am doing now is pretending that i'm this orb of a person who can adapt into anything (read: most situations). it's sort of working, but i feel pretty detached about it. i think much of what makes up your personality is shared jokes and memories. meeting new people you don't have that.. so those things get pushed away when there's no one to share them with. and i've found myself  nodding along with things that i find truly dull, or using anecdotes i have no interest in. this is helping me become less judgemental i think.

but also there are things i know i can't control like how self conscious i am : (

On 8 Mar 2012, at 07:19, Stacey Teague wrote:

wondering about the difference between 'self-awareness' and self-consciousness'. i suppose i've always thought they could be used interchangeably, and they are similar, except i think that SA is generally more of a positive term whereas SC is like SA gone bad os

i think i feel both self conscious and self aware

i feel okay about being self aware, but i don't think i have any choice in it. since i am so introverted, hanging out in this inner world thing i've cultivated, it's natural for me to have a strong sense of self. also maybe i have come to an age where i am more sure of things. it's like your body is a shell and there's a lil you deep in the middle and every day that lil you grows more comfortably into that shell. that's a really bad metaphor idk, what do you think

i think about self-consciousness as one of my worst afflictions, i really do

i think that being self conscious is like being the person at the party who is constantly taking photos, you sort of miss out on a lot of things and are often unable to experience things organically, like being completely "in" a situation b/c you are too busy thinking about yourself in conjunction with the situation and everyone else in the situation

i remember talking to spencer about "knowing yourself" and he said something about not understanding the concept of it via "how can you know yourself if you are yourself" and i assume he also meant 'how can you not know yourself if you are yourself'.

because now that i really think about it, the idea of knowing yourself is bullshit

i mean most of the time we just do things and don't think much about it right, that's probably the way it should be

i just think we are who we are no matter how much thought we put into it

and 'knowing yourself' is not a conscious thing, it's more like something you feel or know as opposed to any kind of complicated thought process

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 1:22 AM, Susie Anderson wrote:

I think that for me being self conscious is more about me being aware of how much I dislike myself. It's weird. I don't know.

It's weird having moments when you realise other people aren't as 'self aware' and they are like 'oh my god you think about things so much'. weird right.

as for the shell thing. i see what you're getting at. just reminds me of the container thing from wind up bird. it would be weird if our outside selves looked exactly what our inside selves were like. i wonder what it would be like. or maybe it's exactly right.

yeah seems like other people always know your quirks and things. jordan always says 'you'll indulge my quirks'. he just seems to have a really good grip on the things that make him 'him'. and he knows we all know them too. i think some people don't know those things at all, other people don't care, and still others are trying to work them out.

just reading what you said about the 'photographer at a party'. i can't say i like that analogy, it makes being self conscious seem really selfish. i guess in a way it is.

knowing yourself is a bit weird. i don't know. sometimes i feel real detached from who i am. and i feel happy about that. is that a bad thing. i think being aware of yourself is better than knowing yourself, somehow.