Fame

I think deep down I have a desperate desire to be famous. Or maybe not that. I guess it's more a desire to be noticed and/or accepted. I used not to care as much, I think. Sure, I wanted friends and all as a kid, but I just sort of accepted that I wasn't popular and hung around mostly with the same people, like my best friend Amy and my other friends like Que and Nichelle. It's sort of like with my weight. I didn't worry about it until high school when Que bluntly pointed out that I needed to lose weight (probably because she was on Slim-Fast herself because of the muscle weight she had; but as a member of the tennis team she got a lot more exercise than me).

Even as far as fads go, I didn't care what other people thought about me not pursuing them. The only fad I fell for was Sanrio (aka Hello Kitty), which was popular when I was in fifth grade, aka the 1995-1996 school year. That was back when they had those cool pencil boxes with the things that would pop out the side (like pencil sharpeners). Sadly, I don't think Sanrio has those anymore.

But nowadays I think I am becoming more concerned about what people think of me. I don't know what triggered it. I guess it must be part of that awkward identity crisis that usually hits you in adolescence that waited till after high school to hit me. (My dad says we're both late bloomers). The birth order experts say firstborns are perfectionists, and that I definitely am. I think perfectionism might also be a trait of Scorpio (my zodiac sign) or of my Asperger Syndrome. So that trait is very dominant. I think my mom's kind of a perfectionist too, so maybe I get it from her (although generally I take after my dad).

Nowadays also I find myself going after things other people do to become known, on the net mainly. You would be surprised how many articles I've been reading on writing, SEO, web design, and Twitter lately. I've also tried to become popular on YouTube, without much success (except for one video that got over 18k views). Unfortunately, I've figured out there are only three ways to get popular on YouTube: vlogging, to already have a big online presence outside YouTube (which the big companies, people like Marriland and groups like the PotterCasters have), or upload clips of anime - either full episodes or short clips. Sailor Moon transformation and attack clips, either official or fan-made, are particularly popular (my 18k-view video was of the PGSM transformations and attacks with the audio from the English anime dub). But my lack of a video camera or webcam makes vlogging impossible, I don't have a big online presence (and haven't figured out how to get one), and YouTube's copyright things make the last difficult (and I've had four accounts get suspended due to unintentional copyright infringement, so I know the risks).

Yet all of that shouldn't matter, right? There are more important things to worry about in life. Yet I find myself vying for popularity online and daydreaming about being on Jeopardy and American Idol, even though my chances of getting on either are slim - for AI I'd more likely wait for 14 hours to sing in front of producers for 30 seconds, like what happened to my former coworker Alex at the San Diego auditions a couple years ago. I could possibly do Jeopardy though, or Wheel of Fortune.

Maybe Dr. Feder was right. Maybe I do need cognitive behavior therapy. Because if I am going to beat this, I'm going to have to change how I think, and that's very hard to do.

I'm going to go now and blow off some steam playing my DS before work.

Finished at 12:25 pm iPod time

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