Confidence without Douchebaggery

  The following is a recounting of something Jody witnessed, and may not have happened exactly as depicted, though that's totally okay, because this version's been sexified by Jody's awesome imagination.

 The Phidelts had Wing Night this past Sunday in Westdale.

 After gorging on the delightful parts of some hapless, mass-produced chickens, me and the younger guys chill for about ten minutes before they head off to another pub. 

   During that time, two lovely young ladies emerge from the restaurant, walk past the bunch of us, and get into a car to light a cigarette.  Long story short, one of our entourage - driven by courage, apathy, and a deeper fortitude located somewhere in his pants - walks over to the driver's side.  I have no idea what he says - I'd later find out he opened with "I'd like to see some ID" - but the girls seem to enjoy it and the rest of us are quite entertained.

  "I love the way he sauntered over there," I say aloud.  "It's such a balls-out approach."

  At that point, a brother - who I shall deem "The Moustache" until he gives me formal permission to reprint his name publicly - responds with a cool point. 

"The trick is not giving a shit if people think you're a douchebag". 

  Think about it.  How many "nice guys" worry about looking like anything but "nice guys" when it comes to impressing the ladies?  That's why nice guys fail so frequently and so hard when they try to be less "nice" at bars and at parties: they're aware that they're putting on an act.  They're too afraid of saying something wrong that will make them look like complete assholes to the women.  Their fears become their focus, and thus become their experience.  There's nothing as confidence sapping, as emasculating, as the feeling that you have to choose between being a dick and being the Pillsbury doughboy to succeed at dating, and life.

  The trick is to lose yourself in the part.  And also to eliminate the word "douchebag" from your self description.  All you're doing is just walking your confidence. 

  Much like Jack the Clawless Tabby did in 2006.

  Call it a biological Napoleon complex all you want, this cat is one mean pussy.  Never once did it occur to him that the bear cub could easily take him out with the slightest of swipes, or that he was about five times smaller. The cat had his turf to protect. 

   Jack the Clawless Tabby never dwelled on his shortcomings: instead, he pushed his natural strengths to the max and harnessed them behind a single goal: telling a wandering bear to get the fuck off his property.

 Issues of confidence are rampant in my daily existence, mostly in the assertion department. Assertiveness remains a challenge for me, especially in the presence of stronger, go-getter personalities who are way more cock and balls than I'll ever be.  They give me little room to maneuver: if you push, I'll either dig in my heels or I'll just walk away, start some lone wolf time. 

  Or, if you're really being direct, I'll push back a little more out of proportion to what's called for, but that's a last resort.  I don't much care for pissing matches with people, but if you're on my territory - my home, my office, my arena - I will do what's necessary to protect my sovereignty.

 And yet, in situations where I'm not forced to beat my chest, I'm damned good at the confidence game.  I've landed a couple of jobs where I only barely met the requirements, based mostly on the interview.  Aaron pointed this out a couple of times when I've had moments of doubt: he's one person who sees that strength, and he's one of the most confident guys I've ever met. 

  We have an archetype in Western culture of the disgruntled office clerk.  That person who occupies a lower station in a greater organization who is so much more capable than what he's getting, if only he had the guts to just speak up for himself.  Frequently, the place where he paralyzes himself is one concept, this all-too-familiar fear:

"I don't want to be an asshole."

  Nor is it just guys.  Alice remarked to me today, in a somewhat related discussion, her own qualms with self-assertion.  After showing her the story on Jack the Orange Tabby, she said this:

   I'm always afraid that I'll look like a bitch if I assert myself like that.

    Back to the Moustache for a moment.

    "You know," I say to him, back at the parking lot of the restaurant after Wing Night, "I've always struggled with issues of authenticity, especially when it comes to meeting girls, but you know..."

     I steal another look over at Mr. Ballsy, chatting up the two girls.

    "It's nothing new.  I've summoned that kind of confidence at job interviews, why not here?"

    The Moustache agrees.  "Real douchebags don't care what people think.  That confidence is attractive and they know it.  You can be a good confident person without being a dick."

    Plus, as much as pretty girls can't initially tell the difference between an asshole and a confident good guy at a bar, I'm willing to bet they enjoy the process of sorting them out.

    Simple concept, right?  And yet, so many people fret over it.

   Losing yourself in the role doesn't mean putting on a show.  It's the acquisition and continued accumulation of a genuine feeling, and then just running with it.  It's like summoning a comic book superpower and then swaggering around. 

  Easiest way to summon this power?  Do what Ben Affleck's character talks about in Boiler Room - which Michael is watching over at his place as I type this:

"Act as if". 

   Assume you're a superstar, then lose yourself in the part.  I do this a lot lately as part of my visualization for acting.  Since I started, not gonna lie, my swagger's gotten more attention from all the right places (and a few of the wrong ones).

   As that superstar, walk up to someone today and strike up a conversation like it was nothing.  Unless the other person has some malfunction in that moment, I promise it'll go smoothly.

  If anything, that other person should feel anxious talking to you.  Be polite, kind, say whatever comes to mind, thank them, shake their hands if the chat was meaningful, then make your way out. 

   As you leave, notice that feeling - high, energized, certain - and carry it with you as long as it lasts. 

  And remember it the next time you see that cute girl you've been dying to talk to.

  To the naturally confident, extroverted A-types, this seems so basic, but to guys like me, it's always a new revelation, like a monolith from 2001.  Some people need to have this literally beaten into our skulls with a proto-human femur bone to make sure we never forget.

  And yes, lately I've been following my own advice and doing this with women.  More on that in a later entry.  Back to the novel, in the meantime.

Randoms - November 17 2010

  It's been a while since I've done one of these.  Here goes:

Migration

  This is a shout out to all my mainstream, naturally-born, predominantly Anglo-Canadian homies, as well as my multicultural, foreign-born, predominantly non-white new Canadian and landed immigrant peeps. 

  Fellow citizens and residents, please be advised: some of us are far from being fresh off the airplane.

  Since Lester Pearson's time, Canada has enjoyed moderate to large scale immigration from many countries. For those who are historically challenged, that's the 1960s, people.  That's when PM Pearson removed the last racial prohibitions on immigration, essentially making Canada the world's first nation not to give a crap what colour your skin was if you wanted to find a better life here. 

  A half century has passed, so you'd think you'd be running into more visible minorities like....well, me.  No accent, no "multicultural" clothing - I don't even know what constitutes "Trinidadian" wear for dudes, anyway.  Maybe a pair of swim trunks, thong sandals, and a big red shirt with a picture of a Coke bottle?  I know if I were living there, I'd be dressed like that 24/7 - and no discernable body odor (this is a biggie: I myself do not partake of the "curry BO" that seems so popular with many of my complexion.)

   Trinidadians in particular have a rather unique place in Canada's migration story, given that they themselves come from a former colony that's barely 50 years old.  Indo-Trinidadian Canadians - and that's as far as the string of hyphens will extend - are often indistinguishable from Indo and Pakistani-Canadians at a glance, and in places like Brampton where the latter two populations are large, are frequently taken to be part of them.   Of course, Trinidadians are themselves quite visible when they're flying the colours - the flag, the roti shops, the calypso, Caribana, etc. - but even those displays are positively dwarfed by the sheer number of émigrés from the ancestral lands. 

   These are some of the reasons why the public perception of people with my pallour as being "fresh off the plane" or "boat" never quite goes away.  Caucasian strangers will still sometimes speak slowly to me as though I'm ESL, and other Trinidadian and South Asian arrivals will assume I'm one of them still getting to know this "cold" place.  All based on what I look like.  Then I open my mouth and remove all doubt.

   So my question: after half a century of immigration - from the Caribbean, from South Asia, and other "visible minority" nations - where are all the so-called "whitewashes"? 

   Where are the kids - now approaching their 30s - who grew up with Hull and Gretzky and Gilmour on the CBC during winter nights? Who listened to rock and techno and grunge as teenagers? Who prefer mates outside their own race? Who show up to Remembrance Day ceremonies with absolutely no sense of historical irony?  The ones who were Arts and Social Science majors at university? 

   Where are the others like me?  There are so few of them that after 50 years of migration, it seems quite the anomaly.

   I frequently get mistaken for being South Asian, or a new Trinidadian.  I don't mind it anymore, but it really used to bug me.  And now that I've grown up some, now that this aspect of my identity is more concrete, this question of finding others like me is no longer as personal as it would have been even five years ago. Instead, I truly wonder, from a preodminantly intellectual standpoint, why it is that I've "integrated" so much while so many others, even when they're born here, have found it so difficult?

   There's a book in this somewhere, so close I can taste it.  Not gonna lie, it kinda tastes like curry...

 Mind Wanderers Do It Melancholy

  Science finally catches up to what spirituality has known for centuries.

  A Harvard study recently concluded that the majority of people's attention in any given day is elsewhere.  That lack of focus on the present moment creates a sense of unhappiness, generating a feeling in the brain that makes the subject feel as though "they're not where they're supposed to be".

    I won't bother re-quoting much of the article, except that it notes that places where people's mind wander the most - and where they are, thus, most unhappy - tend to be at work, resting, or using a home computer.  Eeeep....

   By contrast, the activities and places where people are most focused on the now are sex, exercising, and conversation.....Meat Loaf summed up my position relative to these activities best: "two out of three ain't bad".

   Speaking of melancholy....


SAD Season is Here

  From now until the first day after the Winter Solstice, the nights are longest.  For this blogger, it means the onset of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Though I've never been officially diagnosed, winter's been a crap ass season for me pretty much since I was 12 years old. My family, my ex, and some of my friends can attest to its impact on me. 

   For the past two years, it hasn't been as bad, but only because I've had major crises to keep my mind occupied (in 2009, revising my first book and layoffs at work due to the recession kept me on my toes; in 2010, it was my marriage ending, moving apartments, settling into the new job and life). 

 This year, with most things more or less stable, I've noticed the energy drain almost immediately.  Much of this has to be because I'm at the gym three to four times weekly now, so I'm physically tired, but it's definitely there, in the lack of sunlight. 

  I'm not as bad as some sufferers, but the SAD creates a climate where I'm far more susceptible to being bummed out by little things.  Hopefully, an impending pay raise at my current job, the start to my talent work - as early as next week if I'm really lucky - as well as the Christmas season where I can get away from the routine will all help. 

   In addition, I'm pre-empting the Blahs by registering for ballroom dance classes in January that will run for six weeks - i.e., through most of the crappiest months - and introduce me to new friends and the like. 

  Then again, there's a benefit to hitting rock bottom. In Debbie Ford's The Secret of the Shadow, Ford writes of one of her clients who always held onto false hope, burying the reality of her life's negatives in seminar after seminar, self-help slogan after self-help slogan. Years later, she's still just as frenetic as ever, not realizing that all she had to do was let go, wallow in the crapulence that was the reality of her situation, and then rebuild. 

  The advantage to not caring is if it all falls apart, I hit my credit limit, my car stops working, and so on is that I have the chance to start over.  You get another hand after you fold, right?  That's what the "Airplanes" song says, anyhow.

  For now though, I'm just tired and blah and meh, not necessarily in that order, and should be until the days start pushing back the night again, on December 22nd.

 The Plight of the Shy Guy

  I read Owl City singer Adam Young's blog almost religiously.  He's closer to my true personality type than most other entertainers I see, preferring to explore imagination, romance, and love than indulging in the pimpin' and the drinkin' and the "what what" of the more stereotypical male crowd. 

  Young posted an entry a few weeks back that I recently caught that describes exactly the feeling of angst, frustration, and hope that guys like me have when we see a beautiful woman, but can't approach them for our own crippling shyness.  I couldn't have said it any better myself. 

  Why is this notable for me?  Because Young is the only other straight male in the creative industry I've encountered who still believes in soul mates, and won't settle for anything less.  And he's not afraid to tell people about it. That makes Adam Young, in my mind, a way ballsier motherf***er than I could ever be.

  ***

  All things said, it's a crazy transitional time for me at present. I expect the next two weeks to see major changes to my life.  More thoughts on that as they develop.

Unnameable Randoms - June 9 2010

(Ooh! They've changed the appearance of my posting screen. Good times!)

I previously had a post entitled "RGB Inkblots" for my user-friendly, bullet-point entries. Naturally, I tried to come up with a far better name, but after much deliberation, five cups of java, and many-a hair pulled from my scalp, I decided that my randoms were just...un-nameable.

So I went with that.

Blog Promotion: Girl and Guitar

 This was featured in Blogspot's "Blogs of Note" on my dashboard.  I love personal reflection blogs with that edge of chautauqua to them, designed to tell real stories that are relevant and educational.  The Girl has got a wonderful writing style, tells an excellent story, and I'm quite confident she's going to get what she wants out of life because she's already happy and proud of what she does, even if the rest of us sit in judgement. She's a Bachelor of Science grad awaiting her law school application results, with big dreams of becoming a country star, and is currently employed at a Hooters out west (haven't quite figured out which city yet, but I'm guessing it's in the Midwest somewhere).  She's intelligent, eloquent, and some of the shit that happens there is not all what you'd expect from Hooters.  Check it out today!

A Note on Quarter-Life Guys and Relationships

   In the interests of fairness after my last big entry, here's a few notes about how men in quarter-life are similarly damaged when it comes to relationships.  As my good buddy Michael pointed out after reading that entry, it's unfair to say that many twentysomething women are "relationship-retarded" when I'd say most twentysomething guys are just plain retarded.  

   Perhaps it comes from my lack of having too too many close male friends in high school, but I did notice that the ones I did befriend tended to be more functional - including one who's married with a cute little daughter now living the dream in his own house about two hours away from here: if you're reading, Matt, hollah - and I stayed away from the dudes who, well, tended to spend their time engaging in pan fights (see the picture above and tell me that isn't happening somewhere right now). 

   And when I went to Mac, I tended to befriend, well, men of exceptional character, class, and quality who put the "fun" in "functional" and who, for the most part, will be my buddies for life.  As such, at the risk of sounding elitist, most of the men I've gotten to know in my age group have tended to be a cut above, and thus, not representative of 83% of the quarter life male population.

    I haven't mentioned it in the blog yet, but the reason I list myself as an "author" is because I have, indeed, written a book, called QLO: The Quarter Life Opportunity, that discusses the so-called "quarter-life crisis".  Mind you, I'm not promoting it actively because I have to input a third (and final) edition at some point in the future, because my current fiction manuscript is my main project, and because, well, the book interviews several people in my life, one of whom is my ex, and there's some editing to be done. 

   But another big reason is that I've learned much more about quarter-life - the time between graduation and one's mid-thirties - in the past six months than I think I have since I first wrote the book in 2008, and I'm still learning.

   And a big lesson is that guys really are almost a full decade behind in maturity than girls in so many respects, outside of relationship concerns.  Like, we really are the dudes in that Simpsons episode.  And having been a single guy spending most of my time with guy friends, I can say.....it's pretty damned awesome!   Can't really describe it: you'd have to be a guy doing dumb guy stuff to understand.  There's just so many opportunities for random crazy guy stuff that you sometimes wonder why you need women at all.

  Yet we do, and the thing I've found with most guys is that we fail at the fundamentals of expressing ourselves, especially if you're a typical "boys and their toys" type of dude who's all into his cars, his choppers, his computers and home theatre system, his Wii, his gym membership, his football game, etc..  Women kinda become an accessory to all that, and even when you fall in love and have those feelings for a girl, it's tough for many guys to just acknowledge that this person in front of them isn't, in fact, just another one of their appliances.

 (Hence, why I think many guys tend to ignore you when we're watching TV.  That, and because you tend to pick the bottom of the ninth inning in a tied game to talk about the relationship.  C'mon ladies, we don't interrupt your reruns of Sex and the City to discuss last night's Jays game...although that would presume we gave you the remote control in the first place....muhahaha!!!)

  And of course, there's that whole "machismo" thing.  I think that makes more guys turn into douchebags in the eyes of perfectly good quarter-life women than anything.  And it ruins potentially life-long relationships.

  I've said it before, but I feel I've got far more guts than the most heavily-built alpha male douchebag bouncer type of guy, because I can express my feelings, be vulnerable, and compromise from time to time.  I think women are still naturally attracted to those alpha qualities - money (provider), physical prowess (sex appeal, protection), and charm - but that's just the initial stage.  When the lovey-dovey infatuation of the relationship ends, what they're looking for - or should be - is character: that is, qualities such as ambition, ethics, consistency, compassion, fun, and the like.  Note that these are all qualities that you have to demonstrate, that guys in particular bad at expressing, and yet don't feel they have to express because, well, it's not "manly". 

  Dudes, being an unsentimental meathead is fine when it's just us in a room watching hockey with a couple of bottles of Keiths, but if you're with your wives and girlfriends, that shit ain't gonna fly, son.  If you adore her, if you're thrilled just to be around her, if you wake up every morning and go about your own life feeling happy and grateful that she's in it, well, fucking tell her.  Or, better yet, show her.

   Be authentic to yourself and don't give a rats' ass if being snuggly or cute makes you look like a wimp in front of the guys.  (At the very least, you know you're getting some later, and that it's special, because it's with her and not some random chick the other guys are gonna try to pick up at the bar for a one-nighter). 

  So yeah, twentysomething ladies, quarter-life guys have their issues, too, just like you do.  It ain't just you.  And I'm really curious, what other dumbass things do you think we do that turns you off? 

  This took longer than I wanted it to, so that's it for now.  Coming up in the next entry: the girl of my dreams.....

  Until then, heed these words of Tumblr wisdom:

Incident, Part I

(LS Ratio: 4:6. Mood: Seriously, don't ask...)

I was reading a bunch of random blogs about the bad things that happen to people. Bad shit happens to everyone, but not everyone writes about them, so it's always educational to see how people react to life's random incidents.

That got me thinking: how long can one remain damaged by events?

When I landed my job with the government, it really was the last missing brick in the wall of my life. I mean, it's awesome pay, it's in a great office with a great staff, it's a job that I can psychologically leave when I close up shop for the day, and most importantly - for the time - it's a Monday to Friday, nine-to-fiver-type position, meaning for the first time ever in my life, I had full evenings and weekends freed up to do whatever. I could be normal and get my social life back: cottage trips in the summer, weekend getaways to New York or Montreal with the parents or the wife. Date nights, long evening walks, patios. Amazing, simply amazing.

And two weeks into the new job, my wife tells me she wants to separate.

Two months into the new job, I find out the underlying reason behind that is that she was cheating on me with a friend since July. And she didn't tell me: I had to catch her lying to me.

And around the same time, I find out that some of my friends - more than I had originally thought, as I've recently learned - had known about it well before I caught it, and had chosen to say nothing to me. Even those this technically makes them party to the adultery, and thus partly responsible for the damage I had to endure, I've let them off the hook, but take note, I have a long memory (pirates: ye be warned).

And so, just I'd found the last remaining brick, another one fell out, and here I am again, searching.

As damaging events go, this one would have killed many people, it almost killed me: if not for intervention from my friends and family, it would have. And despite having made the most of it, in fact, having done remarkably well by many professional and personal accounts of people in my life, there's a new wrinkle to this business.

For the past three days, I've started having nightmares. Nothing too monstrous, not the stuff of Dean Koontz novels, but dreams where I'm bothered enough to wake up in a sweat. Once, I woke up punching the air.

For instance, I dreamed, two nights ago, that my ex's grandparents, long deceased, all showed up at my family's house. It was Christmas, and they were staying with us for some reason. Now, in waking life, I never met them: they passed not long before my ex and I started dating in high school.

But I've seen pictures, and I had heard a story from my ex that someone in our wedding party - I know who, but I won't say, given the sensitive nature of this topic - who had been present at our ceremony at Webster's Falls had seen all four of them standing around us as we exchanged our vows. No pun intended: the idea that they were there for their granddaughter haunted me, much the same as I wonder if my own grandfathers were around.

Back to the dream. My ex's paternal grandfather handed me a long-stemmed red rose in a box as a Christmas "gift", and it was the oddest thing you could imagine, oddest feeling.

Then my ex showed up with her new boyfriend, who was dressed in the same tux he wore as part of our wedding party - as one of the bride's honour attendants - and started to make out with her in front of me. I knew in the dream mindset that this was a calculated move to piss me off, so I promptly approached him to separate his head from his shoulders. And though I was punching as strongly as I could, I could not hurt him. He just stood there, and I felt so damned helpless, I woke up swinging at air.

Afterwards, I lay there and just interpreted the shit out of what I just seen. (FYI, I tend to be more Jungian than Freudian: Niles Crane, I've got your back, buddy).

What's really significant about the rose, though, is after I woke up and mulled on the dream, it was obvious to me that I had the choice to either take the rose or try to beat the living snot out of my backstabbing former friend.

And, in real life, I'm pretty confident I could disassemble him with the speed and efficiency of a Formula One pit crew member. I have moderate training in taekwondo, and I have been practicing. Truth be told, I haven't ruled out taking advantage of such an opportunity, were it to present itself. A significant part of me honestly craves it. And I am a master of manifestation in my life, I could make this happen if I really wanted to.....but then, that's part of the problem, isn't it?



Revenge is such a primal urge, caveman justice. I've had at least one friend suggest that maybe a fistfight, no holds barred, no consequence, no charges, is what we need to sort this out like men, as long as it doesn't get out of hand. Maybe it's what I need: after all, this asshole already has my woman.

But she was never mine to possess. Women aren't possessions, but I suspect any man worth his testicles will always have that part of him that views them as such, no matter how enlightened or progressive he may otherwise be. For me to pretend to be any different would make me a hypocrite of the highest order: this is how I authentically feel in this moment. And authenticity is everything.

And the other problem with that fistfight solution: I would make sure it got out of hand. I would make it a point to escalate this: as Tom Cruise said in Tropic Thunder, "I'm talking scorched earth, motherfucker".

Because Caveman Jody maintains that he took someone I was in love with for half my life: that's not something that one simple fistfight is going to remedy, and anyone who honestly thinks as much must have a Texas-sized mental block when it comes to the dynamics of romantic love.

And if that were to happen, I would lose everything I have left, which is quite a lot. Meaning that it's not going to happen. Not a chance in hell.

Now, I have been doing a pretty good job facing these issues down, and the differences I've seen in the other blogs between the emo people - of which I'm still one, though I'm getting it out - still stuck in a rut and the ones who are genuinely growing as individuals is that they are willing to not bury their problems, even if it means metaphorically setting themselves on fire, Buddhist-monk style, just for a little while to, as Robin Williams says, "make you deal with your shit".

That's what these dreams are doing. This is the last bit of baggage left from the affair. I've been avoiding accepting this, have avoided even looking at it, but that's a form of suppression in itself. And now that it's in blog form, it's out there. Consider it purged.

So, I'm hereby drafting the following memo:

Dear Subconscious,

I get it. Message received. You can stop the nightmares now and let me sleep my normal nightly 6.5 hours where I'm a Viking or on a road trip down east or flying through the air on my own awesomeness.

Because I'd rather have the rose than bloody knuckles, dong ma? I choose the rose. There's no ambiguity there. Mmmm...kay?

KTHXBYE,

Jody
There, that should take care of that.

But now that I've put it out there, there's a new risk, one shared by every one of the bloggers I've read so far. Especially the ones looking for the same missing brick in their wall of life as I am. Stay tuned...




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