Chaos Attraction

Attention Whoring

2009-05-19, 4:29 p.m.

Much as I hate to admit that I read one Twitter feed (I am not a fan, I think people should just like, write paragraphs like usual, thanks), I saw this today on John Mayer's. So sue me, it's funny. I have reprinted it as a paragraph 'cause Twitter sentence breakups suck.

"Let's hammer this out today. Long before "douches" and "famewhores" there were these people called "showbiz types." "Showbiz types" are people who grew up talking to themselves alone in a room for hours until they found some sort of outlet. Once they found that outlet, everything fell into place, except for the fact that they still never worked out why they still talk so much. So you see, though filled with deep emotional voids that can never be filled, Showbiz Types are an important part of our Nation's tapestry."

I have been pondering my Inner Famewhore of late. Which is to say, it wants attention, particularly in the career arena, and it is rather sick of settling the way I have for the last uh...most of a decade. And I find this annoying.

I have mostly kept myself on the down low on attention whoring my whole life (though if you ask my shrink, my outfits say otherwise) ever since I got picked on in kindergarten. I did have a phase where I used to be an attention whore in the style of my relatives, i.e. smothery and annoying, in college. Eventually this drove people to run screaming from me, I realized this, and I stopped actively looking for attention from people in real life. Huzzah, people don't run screaming any more except for once in awhile :)

As for the Internet, yeah, I have uh...so many websites I have lost track of how many I have, but I have mostly stayed on the "down low" on promoting myself compared to most people. Mainly because I'd rather not pay huge bandwidth bills, and I refuse to look at my stats because I would freak the hell out if I knew more than oh, six people read anything I did. Occasionally I have horrible moments where it seems like everyone has found my silly links blog (like a year later, I still get people complaining that the $ociety for Cre@tive Rock An@chronism isn't real, and two or three years later I still get people complaining that they can't actually build a lights@ber), and I get really annoyed when I am googling for something and one of my sites come up, but mostly I haven't hit the Internet Popularity Lotto, and to that, I say yay. I have the websites mostly so I can look up this stuff at a later date, or tell people, "Hey, look at that cool thing." Also, I rarely keep up paper/private journals. Eh, whatever.

(The kr8tiv punctuation in the last few sentences was so I don't get more searches on that crap, thanks.)

So, I normally stay low to the ground. It's a personal policy I like to call "not making myself into an easy target." And this inner famewhore thing whining at me like it's a calling or something is annoying me greatly. I can't get it to shut up, but is it a good idea to pursue it? Do I want to constantly be called a douchebag everywhere I go and be unable to avoid seeing it on the covers of magazines at the supermarket? Or since I'm a chick, constantly get bitched at about how ugly I am? Not really, no. But the heart has no logic and still whines anyway.

Bleah.

Where's this stupid entry going already, you ask? I'm getting to it.

So, I have been doing some teaching lately. I have taught the occasional class at the CC in T-shirt reconstruction (had another one over the weekend). I like the subject matter and getting people interested in doing it, but I do get annoyed at the flakiness of people not showing up and stuff like that. I don't feel strongly about doing it one way or another, for the most part. I give a little lecture for like a half hour, do some show and tell, and then let people do what they want. That's it. I have also been TA'ing in the EC class, which is to say, backing up the instructor because this is my 4th time taking it or so.

Two weeks ago, I got a call from the instructor of the EC class saying that she was sick and could I teach tonight? Well, okay, I guess. I called Merry, the other TA, and we pretty well pulled it out of our butts. But we did well, people got what we were talking about, which is the important thing.

I forgot to mention that the instructor usually teaches some kind of "bonus" class after the intro one. This quarter she asked the students what they wanted to learn. Learning about herbal remedies won out in the voting, but some folks had asked about astrology and the instructor was all, "Ask Jennifer."

Anyhoo, since the instructor was going to be out, after the first hour was up, we were all, "No second class, 'cause we can't teach that one" and someone was all, "Teach astrology!"

And so I did, totally pulling a lesson plan out of my ass. And it was brilliant. People were all hyped and excited about it. It was SO MUCH FUN. I think it was the talking that did it. I got to do all kinds of Sagittarian pontificating and loved it.

Hello, inner attention whore.

So, I am debating teaching at the EC myself. I am not sure if the instructor is going to continue teaching in the fall or not (she might, but wasn't planning on doing it, depends if she stays in town or not. Right now it's looking like she will since she'll be teaching at the CC too), but if she doesn't, she's got two TA's who can do it. And maybe I'll do astrology afterwards. I have until June 1 to decide.

I wonder if doing something like that would satisfy the Inner Attention Whore enough so that I don't have to make a more drastic change? I hope so. I'm not sure how much "famous" and attention whoring I want to go on here, but it'd be nice if I could find a rational, reasonable way to shut it up. I don't quite think this is going to lead to me suddenly wanting to become a college professor, but maybe some showiness on the side will do it.


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