oh, I get it. I'm creepy, too!

Stealth photo-taking at the Strand. Photo taken Mar 2008.


One of my more recent Eureka realizations is this concept, or rather this pattern, where you attract into your life the very thing you don't want to see about yourself. Finding yourself frequently annoyed by rude people? Chances are that you are rude yourself but don't see it at all. People are always not coming through for you? Do you perhaps let people down in ways that you don't admit to or see as that? You get the idea. This is life's way of making you come to terms with things about yourself. It is only when you accept this trait you've been denying will these people stop having a charge on you. I have recently found this to be very true for myself and have officially included this principle as one of the governing laws On How Things Work.

So when a recent rash of what Lorin calls "creepos" popped up in my Facebook life, thus giving me a very bad Facebook buzz-kill, I started asking myself why this is happening suddenly now, within days of each other. Why are these guys who I barely knew 10+ years ago tapping me and wanting me to be their "friend," in a manner I find suspicious and unnerving? Then again my paranoia is partly explained by the fact that when I was 14 years old, I met a guy at a party and spoke to him briefly.... and out of that one night the guy phoned my parents' house on and off wanting to speak to me from the time I was 14 all the way through the month before I married Lorin at the age of 23. Ridiculous but true nevertheless. The guy even asked questions like, "Were you wearing a white skirt today? I think I saw you standing at a bus stop by the library on Victory Boulevard."

Creepos everywhere! What the bloody hell is going on?!

Then tonight, while going through photos I took last week, the Eureka moment hit. "Oh, I get it," said I to self. "I AM a creep!"

Here's what I saw: I take photos of strangers in bookstores and everywhere else during their unguarded moments. I don't ask for their permission, and I do it quick, slam, bam, then I put my camera away. And I post these photos, or at least posted one of them now. (ta da!) Those I haven't posted reside in my computer, waiting to be archived.

Also, two months ago I was obsessed with Facebook. Those of you who read this p-blog know how stupid I got. And what exactly was I doing in FB?? I was snooping, of course! I was checking out people's walls, who wrote what to whom, what they are doing now, what their jobs are, blah blah blah. Of course it can be argued that this is what people do in social websites and is thus considered acceptable behavior, but that's really not who I am. I don't even Google people I know without getting their permission first. Nevertheless there I was, Girl Creepola from Teaneck, checking out what group so-and-so joined and what their spouses look like. Gee-zus!

Lastly -- and this one came popping up in the clearing of my consciousness as soon as I started to sit back and watch the discoveries unfold -- I am online way too much. I email friends as quickly as my 70wpm typing speed can allow, with no censorship of my interior monologue what-soever. I forward emails and send out mass emails of my musings at least once a week to two weeks, and I have these photoblog entries that I update at the new rate of at least twice a week. I went from no one knowing where the hell I am to everyone being able to know exactly what I did at 2pm on Wednesday.

What the f**ck is right. I saw what I've been doing and thought, "Yikes. I really do have an inner creep."

So I get it. I totally got it tonight. It was a real eye-opener. And just like that, I felt compassion for the two blokes that gave me the heeby geebies in Facebook. I sure as hell still ain't pressing that "accept friend request" button, but I now know that I'm not above them in any way. I too, it turns out, just wanted to be noticed by the people whom I wanted to like me.