Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Is Authenticity Overrated? + Pain

"Pearls and Polka Dots"--Tuesday, 6/14/16

Anja's bird print skirt kills me every time.  She almost got rid of the skirt until she thought to pair it with her new apricot blouse.  I'm glad she held on to the skirt.  There can't be enough bird print items on the blogs I read!

From aheartandsoulstory.blogspot.de

Sadly I do not have a skirt like this, but I thought I could do a tamer version using a grey polka dot skirt and a coral top.  I also made my outfit a little more work-strict and a little less romantic by substituting a blazer for the cardigan.


Coral shell (Nordstrom), $7.80/wear
Grey polka dot skirt (Kohls), $3.20/wear
Dark grey blazer (JNY), $3.57/wear
Double strand pearls (Macy's), $4.60/wear
Grey ribbon flats by Louise et Cie, $3.85/wear

Outfit total: $23.02/wear

But I kept the pearl necklace of the original!


On our national wildlife refuge visit a few weeks ago, along one stretch of path I kept thinking I was seeing butterflies landing on the ground, but Robert didn't see them.  For a while, I thought I was losing my mind, but I finally caught sight of one with its wings open.  Here is the proof:  One delightful red admiral.


In other news...Much to think about in this article about NOT being your authentic self.  The idea of sincerity over authenticity was a particularly interesting one.  I have a lot of Candor leanings but am definitely opposed to the idea of sharing too much of one's often-fleeting feelings.  I'm easily irritated and often grumpy, and the world really doesn't need to hear all about it all the time.  I am unlikely to pretend to have beliefs and values that I do not have (though there are times it's prudent to not fully express the beliefs I do have) but am in favor of pretending to be nicer, more cheerful, etc., than I am actually feeling, particularly at work.  For example, going into work this morning in quite a bit of pain, I was greeted by a random colleague with a hearty Good morning!  I (more or less automatically) responded in my best cheerful voice Good morning!  I do not believe I was being inauthentic by doing so.  I was temporarily feeling really grumpy and at odds with the universe but it wasn't her fault--my better, more "sincere" self does hope that she has a good day, even if my momentary self-preoccupied self pretty much wants the world to fuck off, and I have worked to make being friendly, generous, and engaged (pushing the limits of my introversion) with people at work my dominant response.  Both my mom and a good friend at a previous job have made the case for "fake it until you make it" in various contexts, and it works surprisingly well (a personal observation that is backed by science).  I try to limit my full on Grumplestiltskin mode to interactions with my closest friends and family members.  This is still a work in progress.

Are you a high or low self-monitor?  On this test (developed by one of my grad school professors), I scored in the intermediate range--a 10. That seems right to me. 

Today was the roughest day pain-wise since I went to the emergency room.  Robert had to drive me to work this morning.  At the end of my lunch break, the pain got really, really bad--enough that I sort of scared my office mate.  I was feeling sweaty and light-headed from the pain and thought I was going to have to lie down on the floor.  Then I remembered that the painkiller dosage is 1-2 pills, so I took a second Percocet and about 30 minutes later, started to feel a little better.  Robert picked me up and took me to my primary care doctor for my pre-op this afternoon.  I am cleared for surgery and now have a bottle of 100 Percocet to keep me going until I can get into surgery.  My doctor was appalled that the urology department just suspended scheduling surgeries while their scheduler was out of the office.  Tomorrow she is supposed to be back, so I am going to call first thing and keep hassling them until they get it scheduled. 

7 comments:

Tam said...

My cousin, when he was 15, described me as a "generational chameleon" and I think this is related to self-monitoring. But I vary a ton by circumstances. Every semester I enter my classroom intending to self-monitor, but I'm only able to self-monitor along some axes. I don't know. I couldn't bring myself to take the quiz.

Tam said...

OK, when I took the quiz, I got 21 points, which puts me in the 92nd percentile for self-monitoring. I have no idea if that's right or not.

Sally said...

I absolutely believe you are a high self-monitor. My gut instinct (possibly totally wrong) is that the ways in which you do not self-monitor in class are not really about being a more authentic self, but more about not willing to sacrifice likeability/popularity for the other things. And wanting to be liked feels like a high self-monitor characteristic.

Sally said...

I mean, obviously the things you do that promote likeability in class are not completely strange for who you are--e.g., you do nerd-ish humor, not share Kardashian videos. :)

Tam said...

I guess what confuses me is that the personality I can assume that (IME) renders me likeable is not the kind of smooth, confident personality that I imagine a person would choose to assume for social success.

rvman said...

I got an 11. I think my result here isn't accurate - there were several questions where I would give the higher self monitor answer, if only I was capable of doing so. (E.g. I can't read other people well enough to mimic them or 'feed' them the personality they want.)

Jen M. said...

Hmmmm. I got a 9. I kind of felt like some of the questions spoke more to being introverted than self-monitoring but maybe that's just me. I think I'm very friendly at work but I am able to be myself and genuinely like people, it's not like I'm in sales or something where I'd be faking it.

And ugh on the scheduling and pain. It's ridiculous that they could not hire a temp to fill in. I mean, really? So weird and IMO irresponsible.