Do It, Don't Do It or Run Away?

Because I was born in a certain time, place and class into an obnoxious nearly perfect family and own a healthy get-you-there body with a really incredibly okay brain, I don't have any actual problems. This is unacceptable, so I have to invent them.

One of my biggest fictitious problems is never knowing when to *participate. This doesn't apply to swimming. I always swim no matter what even if it makes for an entire evening sitting in wet denim and looking like Carrot Top without the roids and face poison. This fake problem is the hardest to bear when I'm in a new cultural situation. I want to get in there so badly but don't want to come off as insensitive, overzealous, a wet blanket or idiotic. It's like so hard.

This works in tandem with my other bogus problem which is that no one around me is actually involved in his/her own life but instead is tracking my every movement through his/her peripherals just waiting for it. I think most of us have this problem, but I prefer that you keep it to yourself because I'd rather be alone in this.

I lost sight of my point, but my point is that I obviously experience this a lot more here than I did at home. It's not just Catalan culture (which I just can't seem to really get) but many others as well because Barcelona is a wonderfully and wildly diverse city. You can't help but be exposed to fascinating and foreign things here unless you're really bad at living.

When faced with something unfamiliar, you usually have three choices: do it, don't do it, run away. I don't recommend the third option unless there is a danger element, and everyone is already looking at you through their peripherals, but you're still left with two. I think maybe you should mostly **do it. I give this unsolicited advice because I know that when I'm finished harshly judging everyone in the room, it's most often the wet blanket TCFSHB (that's Too Cool For School Human Being if you're not up with it) in the corner I remember less fondly than the overzealous idiot even though they might both be going home with regrets.

I just tend to get over the doing it regrets a lot faster than the not doing it regrets (though I rarely regret running away because of the danger and all).




*Examples: waving your arms from side to side at concerts (always questionable), clapping to flamenco music (the answer is don't unless you're licensed), giving a standing ovation when one is not deserved (I normally can't, but I also hope the performers don't notice that I'm the only one sitting unless they are children because that's a very important lesson to learn). Non-example: swimming.

**This does not apply if you are clearly not invited to do it! We all know that guy, and we eventually stop inviting him to do anything ever.