doubts

i'm not strong enough for this.

the safety in being average

As far back as my memory will take me, one flaw of mine has always been clear to me. I’m a coward. You’ve probably met those who are afraid of failure, afraid of disappointment, of reaching for something out of their grasps. That’s me in part. But there’s another fear so deeply entrenched in me that I am convinced it is congenital. It’s the fear of promise, of success, of great expectations. I don’t thrive in adversity nor am I compelled to succeed when surrounded by greatness. I am, and always have been, most comfortable in mediocrity, in the safe anonymity afforded by being average. A few examples:

1. At the tender of 6, I was constantly reprimanded for disrupting class, acting out as a class clown, and being uncontrollable. I felt safe in my reputation as the outcast who people suspected might also be a little slow. Some eagle-eyed teacher saw through my disruptive behavior and believed she saw a brilliant child. The school administrators wanted to push me ahead a grade, as well as transfer me to another school. Already the youngest, shortest, skinniest and shiest person in my first grade class, I begged my parents to allow me to remain where I was comfortable and I promised that I’d attend any enrichment programs the school recommended. My parents must have sensed that my temper tantrums would never desist if they ignored my pleas, so they allowed me to remain in first grade.
2. I supposedly thrived in these talented and gifted classes, but I learned quickly that it was easiest to be mediocre among a group of brilliant individuals. I did whatever minimal was required to remain in the advanced classes, but I never pushed myself to excel because any acknowledgement of my supposed intelligence made me break out in hives.
3. In high school, a guidance counselor recognized my fears and thought that if I was clued into my “potential”, I might find the courage to push myself. She accidentally on purpose let me find out my IQ. She thought I’d be impressed that a standardized test found me to be near genius and that I’d find the motivation to succeed. She was wrong. That number made me apply the brakes on my academic career. I didn’t want to be brilliant. I wanted to be left alone. She then accidentally on purpose left out the class rankings during one of our motivational sessions. I was #5 in a class of 612. A mere three hundredths of a point separated me from the top. In the #1 place was a dear friend of mine who had put herself in the hospital with anorexia because she pushed herself so hard to succeed. #’s 2-4 were also dear friends of mine who similarly worked diligently and tirelessly to secure top spots. I rarely did my homework so it didn’t make sense, nor did it seem fair, that I would be so close to #1. During the last 2 years of high school, I goofed off even more, and tested my teachers’ patience, to see how far they’d allow me to go before flunking me out altogether. I went from #5 to #21 (not the fall from grace I was aiming for) and yet I barely graduated in the spring with the rest of my class because I missed so much school my senior year.
4. I was always expected to attend an Ivy League, graduate summa cum laude, go to a top medical school, and then get into the best residency so that I could become a world renowned pediatric neurosurgeon. I choose the easy way by taking a scholarship from NYU, changing my major every semester and graduating in 4 years instead of in the 2.5 years I could have graduated.

There are countless examples of how I was so inordinately blessed with the potential to be smart, to develop my gifts and make everyone proud. Unfortunately, there are an equal number of examples where I took the coward’s way out by settling for mediocrity. I’m not sure why it is that the idea I could be “something” scares me. I thought I’d outgrow it in law school, but after attending a second tier law school, I found no motivation to be a big fish in a small sea. And now, with the bar exam a mere 30 hours away, I find myself afraid again.

I’m dreading it, truth be told. Aside from the obvious stress and anxiety of the 2 day ordeal, I’m dreading taking it and knowing that I’m sorely unprepared. I didn’t study enough, but I can’t blame it on wedding planning, lengthy hours at work, my father’s accident or any other stresses, distractions or problems. I’m just unmotivated, lazy and afraid. Afraid to pass and afraid to fail. The bar exam is probably my biggest trial to date. Throughout my life, I’ve contented myself with coasting along. The bar exam doesn’t allow for coasting. If you pass, you succeed, if you don’t pass, you fail. For someone who’s deathly results, this is a debilitating problem.

Obviously, I want to pass because then I don’t have to go through the ordeal of studying and waiting again and I can proceed with my future with Pork Chop. However, I’m plagued with the regrets of a lifetime that will surface if I pass. If I can pass despite my minimal studying, why didn’t I push myself harder throughout my life? What if I find that success wouldn’t be as scary as I always imagined it would be.

If I don’t pass, I will feed into my doubts and insecurity and remind myself that there was a reason I always contented myself with mediocrity, because that’s all I’d ever amount to, despite everyone’s confidence and expectations to the contrary.

It’s a no win situation, although I’m sad to say I already know what to expect. Three months from now, I’ll probably be telling myself, “I told you so.”

just like heaven

it was frigid today in the nation's capital. i'm not sure if it really was any colder than any other day recently, but the gusts of wind certainly made me want to go home and snuggle up in bed. genuis that i am, i drove the 70 miles daily to work for the past 5 months during pretty mild weather. right when the spring-like winter came to an end, i also decided to start taking the metro and give my new car a break. i bought it in september and i have already put on 6100 miles on it.

anyway...

i'm a responsible adult of sorts now so i couldn't just play hookey and go to my nice, warm home. as i was walking into my building i decided to treat myself for my newfound maturity by buying myself hot cocoa. there's a little canteen in the concourse level on my work campus, so i popped in to buy a packet of swiss miss. to my dismay, they only sold hot chocolate through the kind of dispenser that spews out mediocre cappuccino. i'm a lazy bum though so instead of just walking ot the cafeteria, i asked someone if the cocoa was good. after hearing it was, i decided to give it a shot.

oh my sweet heaven.

it was the BEST hot cocoa i've ever tasted in my life and better than my homemade hot cocoa. it tasted like liquid chocolate. i'm not a diehard chocolate fan, but there are certain chocolate items that, if made well, will forever have my loyalty. this cocoa has joined the list.

it has surpasssed the frozen hot chocolate from serendipity. it's that good.

now i must know -- are there other hot chocolate (or frozen varieties) that i've been missing out on because i'm a beverage snob?

i'm so over it

over the past few months, i've come to realize that i expect too much from people. i guess it's too much to ask of your "friends" to come to you if they have a problem with you instead of talking behind your back to whomever will listen. it's apparently also presumptuous of me to think that if you apologize for something, a real friend would be willing to try to forgive you.

so far in 2007, my mantra has been: "i'm over it." i've had to deal with the near death of a parent, the continuing decline in health of another parent and the brush with death of one of my favorite uncles in the world. in the midst of all this, i'm trying to plan a future with pork chop, and the more i think about how i want our future to be, the more i realize that i don't want to be afflicted by all the drama i'm currently trying to ignore. is it too much to ask of people to just get on with their lives? i'm not sure why some people thrive on melodrama, because life is too short to be caught up in these stupid things. i'm over all the drama, all the back-stabbing, two-faced insincerity. i know what's important and these ""friends" aren't it.

i wish there was a clean cut off people who have long since been phoning in the friendship.

why the move?

a few reasons (please ignore the overuse of ellipses, run-on and incomplete sentences or parentheses):

1. creating a handle is hard! when i first created the previous blog and its identifying handle, i put these expectations on myself to write regularly and get back into my story-telling mode.. how else would i become an accomplished writer if i didn't practice? right...well that didn't turn out so well, did it? so here's to a fresh start...but i won't limit myself to what i'll allow myself to write about. with the hours i've been working and with the negative free time i have, i need a space to vent before i go insane!
2. i might start talking about work in vague terms, but i don't want to take the chance at getting dooced.
3. with my impending nuptials, my former nickname won't really apply. i haven't decided if i'll officially change my last name, but i will definitely allow everyone to call me by pork chop's last name. and so my current nickname, jt, by which many of my friends refer to me, will become inaccurate.
4. speaking of impending nuptials and work, i feel like i've entered an alternate universe...one that i never imagined becoming comfortable living in..it's called adulthood. i've become so much more grounded over the years (imagine how flighty i was before!) and i almost don't recognize the person i've become. at the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy, i'm trying to embrace this new person.
5. given all of the above, trying to think of a new handle was difficult. given that i've had all sorts of idiotic and juvenile aol screen names, email handles and instant messenger screen names that have haunted me to this day, i didn't want to be afflicted by anything silly. but how to stay true to my silly nature? then it came to me. and here's the story of how happy roy come into this world (literally)...

those who know me in the real or cyberworld likely realize that my first name is very common for malayalee (the sub-ethnic indian group from which my parents hail) Christian girls. as a child, i always struggled with my inability to "fit in" and yet my desire to be "different." the one area where i didn't experience this ambivalence was with regards to my given name...i hated that i knew so many girls with my name. i didn't feel like i "owned" it. (yes i was a lame child who took little things way too seriously...it comes with the territory of a child who was more comfortable with books and adults than she was with her peers). anyway...so one day, i was bemoaning the fact that i had such a common name to my parents. i inquired as to why they would name me as they did when they knew that there were so many girls older than me with the same name. well their response floored me and shut me up (which you'll come to realize is very difficult to do):

my mother patiently explained that i was named for my great-grandmother. my mother had a very difficult childhood and always experienced a sense of alienation from the rest of her family as a result. my great-grandmother is one of the few relatives she had for whom she felt unadulterated affection and loyalty. ok this answer calmed me a bit. it was when she continued with her explanation that i realized how grateful i should always be to my mother...

when i was born, my dad was so excited at the prospect of having a little girl to spoil silly. he had grand hopes for the type of personality i'd exhibit as an individual and he wanted to imbue that hope in the most obvious way possible -- my name. also, my family did not follow this tradition, but many malayalee children take the "first" name of their fathers as their surnames. so what would my name have been? HAPPY ROY. i kid you not. the irony of this is that despite my social awkwardness as a child, the one thing anyone who came across me would remark on was my effervescent and joyful personality...so while the name would have been rather appropriate, i doubt i would have relished introducing myself and enduring the puzzled reactions i'd see or hear in response.

anyway, happy roy has become my alter ego over the years. and so it only makes sense as i embark on this journey of self-realization (or some such crap...let's be serious, i'll probably talk about nonsense most of the time in this forum), that i embrace the person i would be today (if not for the fact that my mother refused to give me such a silly name, would be).

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this should be obvious given that i'm trying to establish some semblance of anonymity, but if you do know my real name, please don't use it here. if you are aware of my other nicknames that wouldn't divulge my real identity to the powers that be, feel free to use it. yes, i know i'm paranoid. but i'm a lawyer..we're taught to be that way.