Me… Charming?

Yesterday someone told me I was charming… and I thought me? Charming? See the thing with me is that I am by no means lacking self esteem, as a matter of fact, I am my own biggest fan, but I am also my own biggest critic… and its not easy when you have that relationship with yourself… you see I know I can be sociable, actually its so much apart of who I am, that sometimes I need to restrain myself from striking up conversations with people and just interacting with people in general… its so much apart of who I am, it actually defines me… but anyway back to the idea of me being charming, its not that the though is ludicrous or anything like that, but its always been a bit difficult for me to accept compliments from people, not everyone, but from most people, and the odd thing is that I actually love being the center of attention, so hence the oxymoron…. And if you ask any of my good friends, they’d say I’m more than confident (I’ve trained them not to call it being vain, but rather confidence!!). And with so much confidence, I don’t understand why hearing someone else, other than myself, give me a compliment is hard to take at times… I guess in hearing a compliment or a statement about me, its actually gives me a glimpse into how other people see…

I’ve always wonder what people’s perception of me are, I wonder if it matches with the perception that I intend to give off and how it matches to how I really am in reality. I have some ideas of what some people think, but the perception that my friends have of me have been built over several years and shared experiences, but I am interested in how people initially perceive me, and how their first impression of me differs from the person I really am when they get to know me. I personally think that I am very multi-faceted, but that there is a consistency in all of my sides, and because of that underlining consistency it makes sense when you examine all of them and take a look at who I truly am. I was having a similar conversation with a friend over the weekend, I was telling him that the perception that he projects is quite different from who I think he really is. It wasn’t a bad thing, because neither the projected image nor his true self were bad, they were just different to one another. And because I was acting on the initial perception of him, it often confused me when he did something that wasn’t in line with what I thought he would do or what I expected and because of that I found that he was hard to read, but none the less I still drive myself crazy analyzing him…

Anyways, so part of reason I decided to start blogging again was because I was confused about some things, and I am at a point where I need to make some decisions about what I want in the future. Been trying to make some decisions, but I’ve left some things open, which make making a decision hard to do, at least for me… and so I’ve decided that I need to get a handle on current situations going on in my life, as hopefully that will give me perspective and allow me to be able to make a more assertive decision about what path I want to follow. Heading off for a mini-holiday on Wednesday, going to go lay on some beaches and think some things through… I think it’ll help me to get away from the everyday stress and just relax and think about what I want and where I want to go… while I’ve know I’ve done good for myself thus far, I’m a person that needs to have a direction or focus, I need to be working towards something, and not get too comfortable where I’m at… that’s not to say I don’t enjoy my successes and life experiences, but I also need to be working towards my next goal as well, I need to feel like I am making some type of progress. And there in lies my main issue, I don’t know what my next goal is suppose to be, and it’s hard to work towards something when you have no idea of what it is!

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Quotes of the Day (couldn't decide!):

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. ~Dr. Seuss

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. ~Richard Bach

Oh, how I've missed my blog :-)...

Its official, I’ve abandoned my blog… sorry… this was the blog that got me thru so many crazy situations, the blog that I expressed all the manic thoughts that were rushing through my head with no judgement… well, it’s the start of 2009, and I’m just reflecting on 2008 and what it was!… I know the quarterly updates are not ideal, but for some reason these days it so hard to find time to sit down and make a quality entry, although I’ve tried many times…

Since turning in my dissertation at the end of September… I’ve been doing a lot of new things… I started trying to find what my passion was, I’m done with school at least for now or at least that what I thought… but then I realized that I have this burning desire to continue to learn, as well as to share my knowledge with others, which led me to taking a part-time teaching position, just to see how I’d get on… and believe it or not, teaching is such a great joy and I completely understand how teachers can put up with all the crap they get, cause it is such a rewarding career. So I do that part time, and although I said I was done with school, I’m thinking I may be done being the student in school, but I’m not completely done with school… thinking I may one day become a professor… and just last night, a really amazing guy I know said I should go do my PhD and really get into teaching… and not that this was the first time someone has told me to go and get my PhD, but for some reason it was different from him… and I’ll tell you all about him in a bit… anyways, so why not teach about what I already know… IT and computers… it makes perfect sense… so we’ll see how things shape up for me in the future, only time can tell…

Aside from teaching, I’ve been so busy with teaching and still doing my full time job, that I totally found myself too busy to find that boyfriend that I was suppose to be focused on, and to be completely honest, it didn’t really bother me, as I’ve found, I attract the more appropriate type of guy when I’m busy working on me… so I knew it would only be a matter of time… So one of my friends told me she has a dream about me and one of her male friends, and she thought we would be really good together. And at first I hesitated cause I’m not big on people trying to set me up, actually I’m usually completely against it, but for whatever reason I went ahead with it… and much to my surprise on the other side of the love match was one of the most amazing men I’d even been introduced to…. And trust me amazing is an understatement to describe this guy... there was something different about him… and the more I got to know him, the more compatible I found him… funny thing is that when my friend, A, started talking about introducing me to this guy (KD) I had the usual questions of what’s he like, what does he look like, how tall he is and so on… everything was on point, well except for the height thing, but i didn’t think it’d be that big a deal… well, me and KD eventually spoke on the phone, and one phone call led to another, which led to another til we got to the point of texting each other everyday and talking on the phone everyday… not quite sure how we got from strangers to the point of talking every day, usually for an extended period time, even hours… it was a good sign, everything pointed in the right direction, the only thing that was left was to actually meet each other see if we got on… I was nervous that all though we get along great on the phone and we both seem to be interested in where things may go between us there was always the possibility of us not clicking when we met in person… being his usual sensible self, KD told me not to worry that everything would be fine… which it was, except for the height thing, turns out when I wear heels, I’m become slightly taller than him… and although I wasn’t bothered by it cause I felt so comfortable with him and around him (even though it was just our first date after weeks of talking and getting to know each other), he had an issue with it… said he wasn’t sure he could get over it… next time we hung out, I had on flats just to show that he was really taller than me, which helped alleviate some things on that note… its been a few weeks since that first date and the last time we hung out (as he lives outside of London.. and we both just got back from travelling) and we’re still kinda just going with the flow, but things have definitely slowed down quite a bit… I think we’re both trying to make sure that we want the same thing in life and in a relationship, so I guess we’re working on our friendship and we’re gonna see how things develop in the future…

At the moment, I’ve been trying to decide if I want to start another blog… I love this blog, but I’ve changed so much since I started it over 3 years ago, I dunno if it still fits, but on the other hand, this blog is my history and is a great reflection on some of the things I’ve been through in life, and some of the things that have helped to shape me as an individual… and no one want to lose that, well at least not me… so after some serious contemplation, I decided to keep this blog… just make it a bit more sophisticated, shall I say! Besides most people already know me as DD… and it’s hard starting over…

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Quote of the day:

It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not. -James Gordon