confident? who cares.

for the past couple of days i've been getting some advice from a coworker/friend: be more confident. her argument is this: if you want to get a guy you need to make the first move. she pointed out to me that i am "gorgeous, working, and going to school. that's more than a lot of people have." or something like that. mostly it wasn't advice as much as her saying: be confident dammit!

oh yeah, because someone telling you that you need to me more confident really works. okay, i'll just go do that then. i know that already. she mostly just surprised me by being able to see that i'm not very confident. (i think this conversation began when i admitted that i can't dance. and her saying, yes girl anyone can dance! and when i laughed like an embarrassed idiot she claimed i lacked confidence)

i've always been kind of a shy person. but i've been slowly overcoming this over the last few years. i'm okay with where i am right now. i don't feel this huge need to change myself dramatically. i see where she is coming from though.

what i really want is to get the most out of my life. if people don't respond to my personality or the way i talk and act then fine. i don't need to change those fundamental things about myself just to please others. i just want to be myself--but fully myself. not conforming to what other people think i should be like--life of the party type person.

i might not have a complete idea of who i am yet, but i'm getting there. one thing i know is my identity is not wrapped up in being an MK anymore. i barely remember to tell people that i'm from Germany nowadays. i don't tell stories about my life in Germany very much anymore. but that is still important to me. everything about my life now is so different from what i thought it would be when i was in high school. who have i become since then? and who do i want to be?

life is too short to really care what other people think about you. but we do care, don't we?