To hate hiding how odd i am

[Faye12345]

Hello all. Hope youre all ok. I wondered if anyone else hates hiding how bizarre they are? Im in a new job and its tiring because im having to adjust my personality to fit in. Anyone else with me?,

I agree that most people edit their personality at work. But I think that people who do it more successfully manage to be a version of themselves, rather than pretending to be completely different. And I guess that is a bit easier if you're a guy who's into football, but it shouldn't be impossible for anything. I think that people often appreciate meeting others with quirks and eccentricities - I don't think being odd in that sense is bad at all. But yes, obviously no politics or religion or strong negative opinions in the workplace!

NotOne - I'm with Bertrand here. Very curious to know some of your opinions. See, you've landed in a place where people do want to hear something that isn't run of the mill. Is the Queen a lizard? Off with her head? Outmoded institution - we need a republic?

I think the monarchy have, in the last thousand or so years, broken this country. Their inbred bloodlines have taken all the resources we had,lands,money,people etc to further their own agenda. They don't,I feel,give a tiny crap about their subjects welfare. They are hugely hypocritical with their relationship to the church,and haven't added anything of value to this country,just draining it like the vampires they are.

That's not the part I would expect to get a huge reaction from,because many anti royalists feel the same.

My unpopular opinion,I guess,would be that I am convinced that the people of this country have Stockholm syndrome. I don't understand how anyone who isn't a member of the elite class can support the royals. I see royalists as Stockholm syndrome sufferers who wave their flags of servitude at their unelected masters while scrabbling for scraps from the table. That they are gullible human beings too blinded by the status quo and wilful ignorance too see that they are being taken for fools by a bloodline that wouldn't lift a finger to help you.

You did ask.

Odd is very difficult to explain now I think about it. If anyone has seen the movie Home then thats what its like for me. I don't fit in, I fit out.

*BertrandRussell 'Honestly? All pretty mainstream, sorry!'

Don't quite know how to feel about that comment Bertrand...

I am convinced that the people of this country have Stockholm syndrome

Are you not a person of the country though? So you yourself have Stockholm Syndrome? So why don't you move out?

Hmm, may have found my people here. Maybe it has something to do with having a wide range of varied interests, reading and thinking very deeply, being rather introspective. I love folk music/Jung/herbs/essential oils/Fabric and embroidery/children's literature/mindfulness and have the ability to be moved by a drop of rain on a grass blade. I have no idea what job would suit me and it is a fairly lonely existence.

Most people are much odder than you think OP.

Obviously Doreen as I have,in my opinion, seen through the illusion of a caring royal family, I don't consider myself to have Stockholm syndrome.

I don't agree with the royals,therefore I should leave my country? What an odd thing to say. Responses like yours are why I generally keep my opinions to myself,unless I'm specifically asked to voice them.

NotOne, I have similar views about the super rich. Wouldn't have phrased it as Stockholm Syndrome, but I am utterly baffled by why we are not in uproar that shareholders and CEOs get hand outs while workers are paid less than subsistence wages. Why is there such passivity?

No one is as "unique" and "odd" as they like to think they are, IMO.

Every person on the planet is different and unique, some of us stray farther from the "cultural norm" than others, that's all.

I have been called "weird" and "eccentric" quite a few times, and really what people mean is "you're so different from me that I think you're a bit of a dick" They don't always mean it is a compliment, IMO!

I know I stray a little further from the cultural norm than some people, but equally I know there are plenty of others like me, I just haven't met them. It's a little deluded and arrogant to assume that you're very odd and almost unique, it reminds of a load of people with tea dresses and victory hair rolls thinking how edgy they are

Obviously Doreen as I have,in my opinion, seen through the illusion of a caring royal family

You said 'the people of this country'. Of which you are one.

I have no idea where you get the idea that the Royals are 'caring'. Who to?

I am utterly baffled by why we are not in uproar that shareholders and CEOs get hand outs while workers are paid less than subsistence wages. Why is there such passivity?

What happened the last time you uproared, and were unpassive about it?

Notoneiota and dancingduck I agree - and would say that I've been reluctantly coming to the conclusion that we are being farmed - in the sense of livestock. Far from wealth trickling downward (how can we fall for that one) it's clear that money flows upwards and this growing gap between rich and poor is now enormous because so much is being taken away from the people at the lower end of the economy. This might be painfully obvious to everyone else I don't know, but it seems almost cynical and openly done now. Every farmer knows that where you've got livestock you've got deadstock, and the weak and vulnerable in our society, and those who for whatever reason lack profit potential, are being allowed to fail and will eventually literally die off - in that the homeless are absolutely failed by the government and the disabled are having their support systems dismantled. In the meantime bankers lose our economy catastrophic amounts, consequence free, and MPs joyfully fiddle expenses.

Er..... sorry OP. Massive tangent there. I'll sidle off before I get the side eye!

No one is as "unique" and "odd" as they like to think they are, IMO

I agree. Some of the things on this thread that people think adds to their uniqueness are really making me chuckle...what a load of self-obsessed, overly-romanticised, idealistic, ridiculous waffle.

Just a hint for all the fabulously 'unique' people on the thread. Those that just can't fit in with other mere mortals who have more humdrum personalities, interests and affectations - there are Seven Billion people in this world. The chance that you are unique, or even close to it, is roughly Nil.

In fact thinking about it a bit more, I think a lot of the things people find "weird" about me, were perfectly normal in different decades (especially things related to appearance and etiquette). I don't actually think I'm that weird, just old fashioned in some things - possibly born in the wrong time. But still, there's probably plenty of people like me throughout the world and certainly I would have been extremely "normal" in some respects, in say the 1950s.

Incidentally, incessant striving to be seen as 'unique' and 'different' or 'odd' is probably the most mainstream thing you can do nowadays

It's the sheep that are truly unique nowadays.

The people who say they are continually self-censoring to fit in - where do you live that having atheist/feminist/anti-monarchy views make you in any way notable? The set of The Truman Show???

There's a bit of unpleasantness on this thread. I don't think OP, nor most of us who have sympathised, have congratulated ourselves on our oddness. In fact I didn't know I was for ages – it's the feedback I get that gives me that idea, and the difficulty have working out how I'm supposed to behave to be "acceptable".

You can find it difficult when you don't fit in and get a sense – often from experience – that who you really are and what you really think will meet with blank expressions or worse.

That is nowhere the same thing at all as saying you are fantastically eccentric and unique and everyone else is dull. I don't think that at all. I'd really like to know more about other people, their real interests, their work and passions. But they don't talk about that and if I try they look at me as if I'm weird. I feel others are seeing me as eccentric if I express my real interests and opinions. If I thought I was wonderfully eccentric and everyone else was dull, I wouldn't have tried, would I?

Those sneering at this, I can only think you haven't experienced this and don't get it.

Yes, Doreen you're right, nowhere has anyone said the royals are caring. Bad choice of words. And I used the phrase 'people in this country' because I rarely meet anyone in rl that agrees with my anti royalist views and so feel I'm swimming against the tide.

As you are on a thread about hiding how odd we are, do you have anything odd about yourself to share?

IAM Farmed is a good word to use,and it is odd and baffling that we have put up with it for so long. Dancing I think the passivity comes from the victim/perpetrator relationship that we have to the ruling elite. We have been ground down for so long that we take being downtrodden as normal.

Sorry for hijacking the thread OP.

I don't "self-censor to fit in" – I don't especially want to fit in, I'd just like to have friends I can talk to about stuff I'm interested in. I accept I could make more effort to go out and find them and join clubs etc and I do do a bit of that, but it's difficult with work and small DC etc.

I live in a naice and leafy area of a large city. You may find it hard to believe, but after several years of being a primary school parent I know from experience that being a feminist and atheist and my views on things like uniform, politics and the curriculum, for example, put me in an extreme minority. I was surprised too.

Iamcurious I think you are dead right that we are being farmed. It is something people roll their eyes about though. I also think the freedoms of the last 70 years or so are an historical anomaly. They'd love to have us all as their serfs again.

Sometimes it is good not to hide yourself though. I was at a coffee morning a year or so ago and people were grumbling about gardening chores, basically equating it to housework. I am normally very quiet but gardening is just about my favourite thing so I commented that I think gardening is more like art, and what is more, creating art in four dimensions because of how your garden changes over time, so a particularly pure and challenging form of creativity. I also waffled on a bit about how I don't have anything in my garden that isn't wildlife beneficial in some way.

At this point there I realised there was a bit of eye rolling going on, so I just shut up. But afterwards, someone quiet, who I had seen around a few times but never really spoken to, invited me along to an activity she does. Basically I made a connection to someone who has since become a very good friend.

Agree Tinkly, and this thread has made me see maybe I've gone too far with the hanging back, and should be more like that.

tormentil you should move to Lewes, or one of the villages near there. The people are very much into Steiner, organic, alternative farming etc. If you're not 'alternative' round there then you won't fit in.

That's a really nice story, Tinkly.