Clarissa's Blog

I actually do have great advice on how not to be mousy. In my youth, I was extremely, tragically, painfully shy. Pathologically shy, even. I couldn’t leave home for days because I couldn’t face people looking at me and possibly criticizing me. I would go hungry and thirsty all day in college because I was too shy to go into a cafe and order. Or even buy from a vending machine because what if it didn’t work and people noticed and that would be embarrassing? I wasn’t a child, I was an adult, divorced woman, and it was still this bad. Nobody who knows me today believes this because I’m now the exact opposite.

I trained myself out of it without any psychologists or any help from anybody. Here’s the recipe. You have to invent a different persona. Somebody who is exactly what you’d like to be. And be that person just for a couple of hours. Join a new group of people, a book club, a language course, a political group. It has to be in person, though. Online doesn’t work. Go to the first meeting of that group as this new person. Buy a different outfit for the persona. Change your name for the persona. If you are normally Katie, call her Kath. If you are Bill, call him Will. Playact at home and leave the house as this new person. Lock the door like she would, walk like she would, everything. Go meet the new group as Kath or Will and for a couple of hours be that person.

I did this when I was learning to speak Spanish, and my new persona was a Spanish speaker. Eventually, I enjoyed being the non-shy me so much that the persona became full-time.

Halloween is coming. It’s the perfect time to try out a costume and be different. This works for any personal quality, not just shyness. Are you indecisive, passive, or quiet? If you don’t like it, try being decisive, active or loud in the new persona, just for a bit. See how it goes and if you like it, repeat. If you aren’t popular with men or women and don’t have the personal life you would like to have, playact at being a mega desirable woman or man for a bit. Soon enough, you will actually become one.

Nobody is “just this way.” We all are a certain way because we had to be. And now we no longer do. We can change it.

Oh God, poor Fort Myers Beach. My poor, poor Fort Myers Beach.

One more place I care about in ruins – this is getting too much for me to process.

There were houses here. I know them well. This little island is a paradise, and look what happened.

I found out that there are students who are about to graduate with a Major in Spanish, and they never took any Spanish courses with anybody except me. I’m effectively their entire Spanish major even though since 2020 I teach half of what everybody else teaches.

It works out because the most successful students are the ones who trust the teacher enough simply to do what they are told. In Beginner Spanish, I have to spend time to fight the resistance to the teaching method. That’s boring and a waste of time. Students who know me, however, don’t fight because they already trust me.

The best way to learn is to squash your inner know-it-all and unquestioningly do what you are told. I struggle with this myself because a know-it-all is exactly who I am. But whenever I stop worrying about the teaching method in the classes I take as a student, that’s when I start learning.

I can’t teach anybody Arestovich’s method because it’s individualized. It’s not a happy pill. It’s hard work. You have to identify your own personal problem and solve that specific problem.

Example. I’m a slow thinker. I come up with great, funny, profound comebacks a week after the conversation took place. I get easily disoriented, especially by something negative. In a crisis, I can follow directions beautifully, in a calm and composed way. But I can’t come up with what to do unless I have a chance to think.

The neoliberal administrator probably sensed this in me. Or maybe he tries this trick on everybody. He invited me for a positive conversation about something I wanted but opened with the worst possible scenario that has never even been discussed. Normally, I’d be thrown off by the swiftness and the negativity. But today I wasn’t. I had solved my problem and could now come up with a looping, soothing argument on the spot. And it worked.

The method consists in finding out why you are how you are and doing something about it.

Please pray with us.

I have a colleague who sends me more emails in a week than the rest of the department put together does in the whole semester.

Do difficult people know they are difficult?

People often project local issues on other countries. Cue the example of Cuba. It’s great that the Socialist dictatorship in Cuba has walked away from putting gay people in concentration camps. But it’s still a dictatorship. It’s still terrible. It’s a softer totalitarianism that it used to be 40-50 years ago. But it’s still a totalitarianism.

People who are saying that legalizing gay marriage makes Cuba better than the US and the democratic countries of Europe should be ashamed of themselves. They are using terrible suffering of Cubans to make some inane partisan jab.

Many things in the world aren’t about you. Deal with it.

In view of the mobilization, there’s a huge shortage of tampons and menstrual pads in Russia. People are buying them in bulk.

Who can guess why?

Dear President Obama,

The bill for the debt you contracted in 2014 has arrived. Please let us know when you will be making a payment.

Dear President Bush,

The bill for the debt you contracted in 2008 has arrived. Please let us know when you will be making a payment.

These arrogant, smug idiots did nothing during the previous Russian invasions, and now the whole planet is on the hook for their ineptitude.