I consider myself an artist. Therefore, my artistic abilities fuel my creativity. My weird fuels it all. It’s not only benefited by artists either, there are plenty other aspects where my weird benefits me. It benefits us all. It places you outside the box, and what’s already inside the box we know. If we all stayed inside the box, keeping our weird under wraps, there would be no new as a result.

Weird? Or Not Boring:

Most don’t seek it out, this title of weird. Normally, no pun intended, we earn the title by just being ourself though. It should be a compliment. It also seems that we relinquish the title as we get older. We get older, and though we seek fun and thrills, it’s by achieving boring.

We hold back our true selves to fit in with the crowd – Or sometimes just a crowd. There is nothing boring about weird. Some of the people we look up to most are because of their weird. It’s just that we’ve accepted their weird. On the contrary, someone else’s weird that we normally prejudge, can come off as too weird.

And that’s alright. Orange juice pulp is too weird for my taste buds. So much, that I avoid it. Maybe, I’m too weird for it, I don’t know, but we are both fine with that. I wouldn’t not invite it to breakfast if someone else wanted it to tag along as their guest. Hello pulp, welcome to the party, mi table su table. We don’t have any beef with each other.

You know who I do have a quarrel with? Crab. Its weirdness tries to hurt me. And here I thought it tastes really good. Yeah, fooled me – I swell up like a balloon. Shame on you, I thought we were cool. Just once though, I feel like we would normally vibe. Nope, fooled me again, shame on me. Where was I going with this?

Oh – Not everything tastes great to everyone, but bland is just, well, bland.

Freak? Or Unique:

The term freak has so much more of an endearing use then it used to. I feel like it used to be a shout-out to cut someone down. For what, being different, that’s just being unique. Now, we awe at it, which is good. Own that title, for it means your differences are a phenomenon. A freak is so unique that they are sought after in amazement.

Come on, you have your freaks in the sheets, the Greek Freak, freaktastic, freak-of-nature, super freak, Freaky two-shoes, freaky-deeky, freak nasty, and even your control freaks. Now don’t freak out just yet. It’s not easy being a freak though. You would have to weird so extremely well to earn that title now. Not just look that part, but own that shit.

Here is my weird, can you outshine me in this? No, well go sit down somewhere while I let the freak loose.

But where is this even going? We seek things that are so unique that we title it freak.

To Me? Or Not To Me:

You ever try to be anyone else? It can be exhausting. It can be fun for the moment too, stepping out of character for the pure thrill of it. Like what we do for Halloween for instance. We put on a costume to try to pull off the most elaborate schemes we can think of and party. I love it.

Eventually, we have to strip it all away to get back to being ourselves, where we thrive. We can’t remain vampires constantly if you’re not used to being a vampire. What, you just gonna suck on random peoples neck all the time now? You wanna continue being Batgirl or Harley Quinn? Gopher it – You’ll begin to attract a lot of jokers with corny pickup lines as a result.

We enjoy doing this so much on the occasion because we share the moment with friends. Friends and loved ones who already know the real you. We feel comfortable showing another side that we might not show as often. That’s our weird side.

Come on, you get what I’m saying here. There’s a reason you chose to dress up as Spider-Man or Chewbacca. The weird side of you wants out. We can relate to these characters some how. We have fun letting loose. That’s why you didn’t go to the party dressed up as your gerbil in the cage.

Where is this going? You don’t have wait to dress up as a character, we all already are.

Weird is Weird:

Weird is good, so own that shit. Merriam-Websters explains weird as: of strange or extraordinary character.

I normally use this section to bring all of it together, but, keeping it weird. So, I am just going to start rambling because I sometimes like to ramble.

Did you know that a Hot Tamale stuck up the nose really burns?

Ooh, I really like that dough. And that’s how the cookie crumbles.

Whoa… why does this milk smell like a fart? I call bullshit.

I am allergic to crab and though people think it’s hard, it’s soft shell too.

Let me know if you found this helpful. I am curious to hear your spin. Leave a comment or find me on Twitter @UghOCD or Instagram @brentleybigkid.

The post Weird Is Weird, Weird Is Good, I’m Good With My Weird appeared first on OCD and its many many UGH moments.

I can also say that my thoughts of fear have changed. I would originally lump fear, as an entity, as a bad thing. Being so famously known for getting in the way of our biggest goals, I now would like to think of it as tool. A hurdle needing hurdled – An obstacle for the conquering. This thinking both scares the piss out of me and deserves some of the biggest credit towards my personal growth.

Facing Fear – Personal Growth:

Like most, personal growth has always been important to me, but I allowed fear to halt that progress. Fear of failure, embarrassment, getting hurt, and even success. If you’re anything like me, fear of success seems to be an odd reason to stay content. I think it really narrows down to fear of change.

If you’re anything like me again, or like anyone for that matter, change doesn’t seem to come naturally. Change is scary, as well as a huge player in our personal growth. In order to develop, growth requires many factors to change. As a result, it requires facing a few fears more frequently.

So doesn’t that make personal growth proof that we are facing fear? Doesn’t it also prove that facing fear is important for personal growth? Yet that’s not on the forefront of our minds when dealing with fear. All of the negatives drown out the benefits. When face to face with fear, normally we contemplate failure, embarrassment, or pain. Even if the success part crosses our mind, we tend to at least give breath to the thought of “how does that impact the good”?

Focusing on personal growth doesn’t really change this process either. For me, those things still play out when confronted by fear. But as a result of trying, new thinking follows – progress is success, and success is progress.

Facing Fear – Seeking Success:

A few days before graduating college, a professor of mine asked me “What now?”. My answer played out something like this – “Get a job, and work hard to be successful”. In his follow up he asked “What’s success?”. I don’t remember my reply, but I know it had something to do with amounts of money. I mean, that’s why I attended college, to better my chances of making good money.

A few days shy from graduating a school that I attended for 4 plus years, studying engineering. I was ready to seek a version of success that wasn’t my own version. He went on to advise that success is based on what you seek and it’s not just the result. “Do you agree?” My reply then was short and no reasoning followed, “No”. That’s all I said.

I do remember that I walked away not believing the “No” answer I provided. To be honest, my answer to his “What now” could’ve been “I don’t know”.

I do find that “what now” does help me in my true version of seeking success. I know what I want, and it does include failure, embarrassment, and getting hurt. All fears that we must face in order to continue seeking the success we work so hard for.

Proof that we are facing fear, and proof that facing fear is important to our success.

Facing Fear – Creating Goals:

Why do we create goals? Creating a goal either gives us the opportunity to reach it or quit on it. Reaching a goal is key to both personal growth and seeking success. That makes creating them proof of facing fear. Any good enough goal that we set for ourselves requires that scary change.

Think about some of your biggest goals. For example, let’s use a common goal – Losing weight. In order to meet this goal it requires at least one of these two things – workout and eat better. Either one, let alone both of these, require tremendous effort. You now run the risk of facing fear.

The effort requires a change in the amount of time you put focus on this goal. How will that impact you? It can impact work time, family time, you-time, playtime, sleep time, and more. You run the risk of failure, embarrassment, and getting hurt. Which in turn we fear that the time has now become wasted. Facing fear is apart of chasing goals.

I currently have a goal to face fear more often. Which is part of a bigger goal of mine to recover from OCD. My OCD feeds on my fears, therefore if I can change how I look at fear, recovery becomes a realistic option. As a result, chasing this huge goal of mine, I have faced failure, embarrassment, pain, and success. It comes with it – And I know it’s worth it.

Scary Difficult and Scary Important:

So is fear all bad? I think we become bias because the scary is so much louder. Just because something is difficult doesn’t make it bad. We make goals that are scary. A goal is seeking a change, change is scary, which makes success frightening too. It’s all important.

Initially, we need that fear – It reminds what is important to us. I don’t think we are better off not having fear, I honestly think we are better off facing fear.

Here is a quote I’ve read recently that seems to stick. Maybe it can help: “Sometimes the fear won’t go away, so you’ll have to do it afraid”.

Let me know if you found this helpful. I am curious to hear your spin. Leave a comment or find me on Twitter @UghOCD or Instagram @brentleybigkid.

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