Yesterday, very few people came to my garage sale. But they bought the most expensive stuff, netting me almost $300.
Today a lot of people came but they bought really cheap stuff, bringing in $26.
I’m still a lot happier today than I was yesterday because yesterday I felt really unpopular when I sat there alone and nobody was showing up.
Why worry about your popularity when you got so well-paid for a few hours’ work?
Take the cash and let the credit go.
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OMG me, too. I am still super sensitive to hints that people don’t want me around, and I make myself scarce before I am faced with outright rejection. This probably means I often come across as aloof and disinterested because I am overprotective of myself, but it’s hard to shake the feeling I’m not welcome (probably not even true every time), followed by wanting to do everyone a favor and get lost.
Heh. I feel lucky now. I was unpopular as a kid also, but so socially oblivious that I mostly didn’t notice it. I only realized later that I had no friends at school, and actually nobody talked to me there unless a group assignment forced them to. It was a gut-punch when I figured it out, but I got over it.
I’m EXTREMELY sensitive to any hint of dishonesty, though. I never could tell when people were lying to me, and was a very credulous child. People– siblings, adults– found it both easy, and hilarious, to exploit this… with the result that I now assume everyone could be lying all the time, and spend inordinate effort on social risk assessment: if this person isn’t being honest, what’s at risk? How do I protect myself? But it’s kind of a bummer not being able to trust most people.
Probably the #1 most attractive thing about my husband is that, like me, he is congenitally incapable of lying. It makes him so nice to be around.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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