{"id":482,"date":"2003-02-01T00:42:00","date_gmt":"2003-02-01T00:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffreyatw.wordpress.com\/2003\/02\/01\/waste\/"},"modified":"2003-02-01T00:42:00","modified_gmt":"2003-02-01T00:42:00","slug":"waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/2003\/02\/waste\/","title":{"rendered":"Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my Psychology class, we cover all sorts of topics, from adolescence to peer pressure to alcoholism to sex &#8211; and you can easily tell how all of this is related, though. I&#8217;m shocked by most of the stuff I hear &#8211; how much goes on with kids my age. I brag, saying that I&#8217;ve never abused drugs or alcohol, and I&#8217;ve never had sex &#8211; all those (yes, including the last one) are activities that shouled be directed to legal adults. I convey my record of complete social abstinence to 80&#8217;s Guy, and being the opinionless blob (mentally) that he is, he just nods and gives a &#8220;thumbs up but actually really thumbs down&#8221; sort of gesture, or a &#8220;good job although I don&#8217;t really care and I&#8217;m the same as you only I just don&#8217;t talk about it&#8221; sort of gesture.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t really be sure of what 80&#8217;s thinks, since I called him an opinionless blob, and I&#8217;ll do it again &#8211; he&#8217;s an opinionless blob. But I can tell you for sure &#8211; the only reason I prance around so proudly is because I&#8217;m so goddamn jealous.<\/p>\n<p>I think I&#8217;ve mentioned before that I&#8217;m jealous of the jocks, the populars, the YGG&#8217;s, the whatever-you-call-it. Many people would gawk and ask why I&#8217;d like to be like THEM, the airheaded preppy patriotic athletes that rule the school, the neighborhood, the country. I&#8217;m an &#8220;intellectual,&#8221; as many, MANY people like to call themselves. I&#8217;m different, I&#8217;m unique. And like any adolescent must supress these &#8220;urges,&#8221; I&#8217;ve gone long without any type of rebellion against parents and real &#8220;participation&#8221; in the true social lives of the people around me.<\/p>\n<p>I may just be paranoid, but I find myself doing so much less overall than all of my friends. I already mentioned the same old drugs\/sex crap, but yeah, it&#8217;s also the &#8220;rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll&#8221; &#8211; I don&#8217;t listen to much music (I own one or two CDs), I don&#8217;t watch any TV, I don&#8217;t go to the movies much anymore, and I just don&#8217;t follow the media in which almost everyone submerges themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Is everyone else really more shallow than I am, since they all listen to the same music and watch the same TV shows and movies and just do the same activities as everyone else? It&#8217;s not conformity, it&#8217;s doing what you like and finding people with the same interests as you. <i>Simple as that.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>So why do I find the need to try my hardest to act so unique and different than everyone? I dislike using this metaphor, and I can&#8217;t believe I&#8217;m really placing this label on myself, but I almost see myself as wearing some sort of social mask to make my individuality heard. And it&#8217;s not working. You understand what I mean?<\/p>\n<p>Simply, my personality almost exudes a sense of falseness and I think that it scares people away. The nicest people I know are truly sincere about everything they do.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, I&#8217;m content with the friends I have and the activities that I do, however limited they may be compared to those of my fellow classmates. But if I were born again, I&#8217;d probably try harder to become one of the crowd and try to push myself into popular culture more. I&#8217;d be a COMPLETELY different person than I am today, but would I be happier overall? In a sick, twisted, oversexed, overdrugged, media-saturated sorta way, yes. I&#8217;d be in &#8220;airhead&#8221; heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my Psychology class, we cover all sorts of topics, from adolescence to peer pressure to alcoholism to sex &#8211; and you can easily tell how all of this is related, though. I&#8217;m shocked by most of the stuff I hear &#8211; how much goes on with kids my age. I brag, saying that I&#8217;ve&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/2003\/02\/waste\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Waste<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}