April 01st, 2016

"I see every moment of everyone’s life, as a performance." I say this to my roommate attempting to explain the concept of this blog to her. "Thats sad." is her response. I get this reaction frequently, which is surprising. I am nothing if not, wholly, intensely and often annoyingly optimistic. My interaction and evaluation of almost all things I come in contact with, is positive. Unfortunately, most people see performance as fiction, dishonest. Something that is an example of real life, but not. You can walk away from a film, play or performance with the security of knowing it wasn’t "real". It was however, someone’s reality. The way they think and see the world was expressed in the performance. It was a way for someone to take what was in their brain and make it physical, tangible and real. The same way a photographer gives us a glimpse of their reality; we are able to see what they see. This is what I mean when I say life is a performance. Performance is taking the internal and making it external. We are not telepathic. We have no way of knowing the raw thoughts and feelings of those around us. We cannot let people into our heads in order to express our truth. All we can do is take the confusing mess of thoughts, memories, sensory information, social conditioning, life experiences, cultural understanding, and biological needs, attempt to make sense of it and than share it with others. We are performing ourselves. Everyday, we take this mud of feelings and turn them into action, dialogue and relationships.
Starting a blog was difficult. My reality is not extraordinary. I’m 26, work in a restaurant,  live with two roommates and barely survive on my paychecks. I’m a vegetarian (even I think that’s irritating), intensely debate sporting events I know nothing about and drink when I’m lonely. I’m white, I barely have a master’s and I love TV. Understandably, these “qualities” coupled with crippling Catholic guilt makes talking about my life quite challenging. There is, however, a need in me to share my theory of how we exist in the world. It’s simple, perform yourself honestly and be mindful. When I look at my life and the people around me, what I see is magnificent. Brilliant people trying to be amazing but floundering because they don’t like themselves. If you want to be good for others, you first have to be good to yourself. We want to take care of everyone around us, but we are horribly abusive to ourselves. If our best friends knew how we talked to ourselves in our head, they would beat the shit out of us. I’m learning to be a better person for the world, by first liking the person I’m trying to perform (the person in my head). So this is my plan, talk about life, communication, performance and self love. I want our performance of self to be authentic and truthful. I want people to stop apologizing for who they are. I want people to stop taking offense at things that are simply different. I want to better the world by telling everyone around me they are awesome.