For me, it’s dressing well and looking good or just put-together. I spend an inordinate amount of time reading and studying men’s style magazines, shopping for good clothes, spend a ton on my hair, reading and studying style websites, paying attention to other men that have it going on, etc. and I still look pretty schlubby or like the average guy that isn’t putting in too much effort. However, it seems to me that most other men my age and in my general social group effortlessly achieve what I’m going for. I know it’s effortless because when I try to talk “shop” with them, they look at me like I have two heads; most aren’t even thinking about style at all.
I could have written this. The only thing I look worse in than clothes is my own skin.
A lot of people effortlessly can go to events where they know no one and be gracious and charming and conversational. I end up standing around with the other guys who are bad at parties and we all stand around not talking to each other.
Singing for me. One year my Christmas present to my husband was to refrain from singing any Christmas Carols. He always maintained that was the best present ever. For my daughter, it’s spelling. Perhaps she should promise her dad not to spell anything in December?
I’m curious - about how old are you and how long have you been putting the effort in? I spent years (teenage years) doing the same things you describe and no longer put effort in because I’m pleased with the results. Obviously there are new trends, if you want to be trendy, and there’s always something new to learn. But there’s a long but clear transition being 15 and buying my first non-white-athletic socks and now, when I find it hard to find any genuinely new information/tips/advice and don`t bother looking.
What are you going for that you find other people achieve so easily? Is it your social group that’s unusually successful or people in general? Because I think most people look pretty lousy, personally.
Ahh the social thing, my Achilles’s heel as well. I’m self reliant. tenacious, and creative, but fitting in just doesn’t happen. Oh well, that you have to struggle to understand is worth so much more when you finally do.
Yeah. This girl was a friend of my roommate when she started having a hard time so she was spending some time over at our place. Did everything I could to make her feel comfortable but she wasn’t responding to anything. Oh well, no harm done.
Then we have a party and a friend talks her into bed in one night.
Though I can honestly say I’m not even close to as naive now as I was then, that’s still a skill I’m never going to develop.
Chopping veggies. Well, chopping anything, really. Whenever I worked in food service, my coworkers would be slicing and chopping beautiful, shapely ingredients, whereas anything I took a knife to ended up looking mangled and misshapen.
Same with folding. I can fold shirts, pants, etc., just fine, but sheets are something I have major trouble with. Then I see the neatly folded sets in my parents’ closet and I am baffled.
Other people I know who likely make similar incomes to ours seem to have no trouble having nicely furnished rooms and well maintained homes, whereas we are always putting off things like painting, repairing broken floor tiles and have exactly one piece of furniture we didn’t get hand-me-down because we just can’t afford stuff.
I go out with friends and watch them pound beer after beer after beer after beer all friggen night. I have one or two and I wind up full. Yeah, full, like can’t even physically drink any more. And to make it worse, that’ll be enough to get me good and buzzed (especially if instead of beer it was one or two cocktails) and then an hour later when the buzz wears off, I’ll have a headache or be so tired I’ll want to go to bed. And to make it even more worse, about 1 time in 10 I’ll have some sort of a reaction and wind up with my eyes all red and puffy or I’ll get really bad heartburn.
And I’ll I wanna do is be able to go out with the guys and have 9 beers and still be fine.
Oh, and add me to the list of people that can’t just go and talk to people. Hell, yesterday I went on my first long motorcycle ride. Half way through we stopped at a bar. After five minutes this guy is cracking jokes with the bartender and talking to the other patrons like he’s known them for years, then he tells me I’m a stick in the mud because I haven’t said two words. Then, at the end of the ride we stop at a neighborhood bar with my dad and bunch of his friends and as we’re leaving (and these were all people I’ve known for a long time, one of the other guys says “See ya later Joey, next time you come try not to talk so much (sarcastically)”
Grrr, I know, I know, but I just can’t do that.
And another one for me. Building stuff. I can fix stuff, but I can’t build stuff. I can measure and work out the angles and cut and nail, but nothing is ever square. For example, give me two pieces of wood and tell me to cut them both to 20 inches long. I’ll get out the ruler measure to twenty inches along one side, measure to twenty inches on the other side, then wonder which side of the 20 I put the pencil mark on. Then I’ll connect the lines with my ruler but I’ll miss the second line by the thickness of my pencil lead, so I’ll adjust for that. Then I’ll saw it crooked, or if it’s perfectly square it’ll end up being just a little different then the other one. All in all, I’ll spend 5 minutes doing it, where as I see other people doing the same thing in 30 seconds.
And I can’t nail something squarely to something else to save my life.
Math. ‘‘Suck’’ is a relative term, I guess… I still get As in math courses. It just takes me about three times as long to figure out what I’m doing, three times as long to work out any problem, and I’m never sure that I’m correct. I have forever been the girl who runs out of time on standardized math tests. I was always the last one to turn in my test in class – I might get a 98, but if you told me I got a 64 I would have believed you, because math to me is foundering about in a world of uncertainty and chaos.
The only math course I took as an undergrad was Stats 350. All I remember is eating, sleeping, and breathing statistics for an entire semester. I mean I killed myself learning that stuff. I got an A-, but I still barely comprehend half the shit I learned.
NSA friends. I’ve got a partner, and I’ve got plenty of acquaintances. Some of these acquaintances might be called quasi-friends, but no close friendships. And I totally take responsibility for this. My work requires me to be alone most of the time, and the rest of the time I’m with my partner. The problem is that he’s the same way. Aside from each other, we don’t have any really close friends.
Being graceful/not being clumsy. When I was a wee girl I was always knocking things over, dropping things, breaking things and falling over/falling down the stairs (this happened so regularly it got to the point where my mother’s first reaction was “oh for god’s sake!” instead of “are you okay?”).
Always assumed that as I grew up I’d become more graceful; it never happened. I fall over a bit less but I could still cause an accident in an empty room. Can’t understand how most other people seem to be able to get through life without being so destructive yet I can’t seem to walk past a glass of juice without spilling it.
Running. I am in pretty good cardio-vascular shape. I bike, lift, run, and do other stuff. But I am a poor runner. I can run 10 miles, but at a snail’s pace. For some reason I just can’t build up my speed.
