Intention of the Reinvention!

It may sound a little egotistical, I but I really like myself as a person. I mean, that's a sentence which shouldn't really have a negative connotation, but it does. The world certainly would be a better place if more people liked themselves! So the idea of reinventing oneself is a tad extreme for my liking. I see it as... working on a custom car in your garage. You've got a great old car, but you tinker away on it, restoring it, improving it, making it into the work of art you really want to cruise around the coast on, top down and music up. I rarely think that you're so fundamentally flawed that the only way to move forward is to completely reject the majority of things about yourself and start afresh.

Other than periods I've had of major improvement in my life, there has only really been a single time where I can honestly say I've 'reinvented' myself that I remember. It must be noted also, that I don't mean in any way I'm perfect or beyond major improvement - in fact I'm a wholly flawed individual who could probably do with a bunch of serious life changes - and it comes back to my perception that to like yourself and state so, can be seen as a tad egotistical. Maybe it's the ol' New Zealand tall-poppy syndrome? Who knows...

When I was a kid, I was amazingly shy. I had few friends (I would probably say I only really had one, best friend, until I was a teenager) and was bullied seemingly everywhere I went. It sounds dramatic, but I really did have a hard time at most schools I went to; this led to the often bewailing of "Why does everyone hate me?". I had low self-esteem, was overweight and to cap it off, I started going bald at 14 and growing a full beard at 12. I loved myself as a person, but as a kid, it's hard to like yourself when no one else seems to. You even get settled into the role of "I'm here to be the unpopular guy" and you find yourself falling into the similar traps, actions and habits of someone who is seen as annoying and disliked. This, of course, perpetuates the problem and you soon devolve into a never-ending cycle of adolescent misery.

Cue art school. I was fresh from high school, and the brochure for the school made it sound as if it were speaking to me. Individual creativity. Friendly environment. The first week of art school I'll always count as one of the best of my life. I can't remember a huge amount of it now - it was nearly a decade ago - but I'll always remember the first course. It was in a giant theatre, and there were long tables along it, packed with new people. I knew no one, and I could feel the fear growing inside me. There was a girl next to me, who smiled, before returning to her work. I said nothing.

Then, without warning, something clicked in my brain. I still don't know where the clarity came from, or how it came to be in my young, muddled head, but it told me to stop. Stop being shy, stop continuing this isolated path. I remember looking at the girl next to me. I didn't know who she was. She didn't know who I was. I could be anyone. I can be anyone. I could, even if it were fake for now, be the person I knew I wanted to be. My voice was trembling, but after a few moments, I said hello to her. Her name was Hannah. Then I asked another person their name. His was Charlie. By the end of the week, I was no longer shy. I was the (mostly) confident, well-liked guy I wanted to be. Just like that. It doesn't seem like much, but looking back on it now, it still completely boggles me how something so simple as saying hello to someone, could change my life so dramatically. Just a change of thought to the cliche 'new place, fresh start'. I faked it for a while - and even afterwards struggled with reconciling what was more real, my old shy self, or my new confident self - but over the years, I grew with confidence, to the point, where I am no longer gripped with fear in new situations or when faced with new social encounters.

I'm still an introvert at heart. I don't think I'll ever be that guy who loves public speaking or feeding off peoples' energy at parties. But that simple reinvention of my thinking was undoubtedly one of the more profound moments of my life. I'm still fairly chuffed my younger self was able to come up with such a monumental decision! Without it, I wouldn't be the man I am today.

The Weird and Wonderful World of... Flirting?

If you've ever had the displeasure and wholly uncomfortable experience of me hitting on you (and being pretty much sober for my entire life, I can say I recall it's a fairly low number; also, although me flirting with you may feel like hitting a brick wall, I do mean "hitting on" in the metaphorical sense), it's no secret that on a scale of zero to ten, my flirting skills have hit rock bottom and are digging for fossils. Which is great, as I've always had a fascination with palaeontology! Not so great for dating...

I'm not going to give you a history of my love life, to spare the shame of my ex's, but perhaps I'll share some anecdotes which have shaped my understanding of this most curious social interaction: "flirting". Get ready for lots of probable misinformation from a flirting-newb, completely skewed by my experience as a male (which I'll have you know is a completely different experience from being female I'm told). Aw shucks, let's be honest - it's a hashed-together post so I can moan about how hard flirting is haha... and yeah, it's a bit long. Lots of whining...

Flirting is hard to define. It's not really getting to know someone. That's a part of it, but when you get to know someone, it could be a completely non-sexual encounter, between two friends perhaps. Flirting really is probing that tentative area between openly saying you like someone and feeling that secret attraction to them; it's a scavenger hunt for that mutual spark, using such tools as wit, humour and flattery, where you let the other person know you're interested, but it's light hearted enough to allow for sufficient bail out contingencies. Sometimes you get rejected - or worse - but sometimes you find that connection and get a response back. Most times, at least for myself, you aren't quite sure if the other person is flirting, if you're getting a response back, or even if you yourself were flirting at all!

It perhaps wasn't until a year or two ago that I really even thought about seriously flirting with the opposite sex and trying to get dates (which is, I feel, a bit different from simply flirting, even if they are connected). I was very shy and not at all confident, so before I was even near a girl, I was already thrust into a confusing predicament. You always hear "Just be yourself!", which is great if your usual self is a charming, handsome so and so. But what if you're not at all versed in the ways of the female? Then you have to fake it. And that has been one of the major sticking points for me and being successful in flirting: it's a game, and not one I really want to play. You create interesting points, you thrust the metaphorical peacock plumes up and showcase your intellect and wit and make the other person feel engaged, in the hopes you can decipher if they're interested, and hopefully take it from there. I can be suave and charming in my own time, but around girls I'm a mess. As little time I can spend in that terrifying situation, the better! That's the real me. Girls don't want that (well from my experience anyway), so for me to be successful at the game, I already have to achieve some sort of deception, and give off the pretence that I'm calm and collected, which compared to the lies some guys spin when flirting, is light. Should we go around, telling guys and girls we're miserable or if you're shy, walk up to them and grunt while shuffling your feet? Of course not. But you cannot deny that the search for that attraction - this interaction we call "flirting" - is a game, and a game based on grandiose illusions and deceptions to beguile the other person into thinking you're amazing and desirable at that! Most of all, the game is entirely unavoidable if you wish to ever know truly if someone else is attracted to you.

So it's hard for me to flirt. Not every girl is going to be attracted to me. And yet the very premise of flirting is that you're trying to tar each girl with your brush (that sounds increasingly rude!), in the sense that you don't care if she's interested, you're going to probe for that spark anyway! And how do we make sure we're not dashing our hopes prematurely by not being what the other person wants? We present this edited version of ourselves. We use tactics from dating books, like not doing instinctual stuff like buying her a drink, or giving a compliment and then an insult. From the start, they're seeing a false person with a false way they act, and you're deceiving them and at the same time, lying to yourself. It's a wholly unsavoury affair. I don't like deception, and when it comes to girls, I'm not all that good at it, so already the flirting game is set against me.

To first even be successful at the game, you have to believe that every girl could be interested in you. That's the main reason why I didn't start flirting with girls until recently. I had low self-esteem and never asked any girls out for the simple reason of "how could anyone like me?" I wouldn't know if a girl liked me if she slapped me in the face. Literally. *Anecdote alert* I was a young lad at my aunty's birthday party. All the young kids were left to their own devices. This one girl kept slapping me. All I could think at the time was "It hurts... it hurts so very much...". It was probably the meanest a girl had ever been to me. Then she kept making me chase her behind the garden shed during our game of tag. Once back there she'd stop and start breathing heavily with silky eyes. Of course my natural reaction was to tag her and run off. A decade later I know that the girl was angling for a kiss (that naughty tart!), but I'm still more or less none the wiser to whether a girl is making an advance at me or is interested. That was obviously from before I knew girls even existed as a species, but in the years passed, there have been times when girls have perhaps been interested in me, and yet I felt so undesirable, that I never ventured any further with them.

Now I'm a bit more confident. I feel like I could be liked, even desired, by the opposite sex. I still suck at flirting though. I'm just not a great player of the game and in the end, I still do tend to let regrets of not asking girls out or going up to say hi slip through. Not because of the fact I feel that I'm inadequate any more, but rather because it really is a complex social interaction which I know I'm not fully versed in! Who really wants to watch me bumble through lines and dialogue that I'm not even sure is what you're after. Which begs the question, if a girl likes you, why can't they initiate?

Guys have assumed the hunter-gatherer role in the world, handed down from generations and generations of jabbing woolly mammoths to death to prove how they should get all the breeding rights. Our role, whether we're good at it or not, is to forever chase the things we want. And the majority of females are happy to be chased. Nay, expect it. It's not right or wrong, it's just how courtship has worked for the last... forever. Girls don't make the first moves. I've heard of rare cases where girls have. It's so rare, they even made a movie out of such a strange idea (if you've ever seen Leap Year, I pity you, as it's probably the worse rom-com I've ever seen, and I was forced. to. watch. every. frame). It'd be so nice to perhaps just be sitting there and a girl walks up to me and begins flirting with ME. And not only that, but make it obvious. Not in the strange, overpowering way, but complimenting my shoes is not going to make me automatically think "Ermehgawd! She's flirting with me!" So don't just sit there, thinking perhaps you're attracted to me (c'mon ladies, you know you're out there... okay, I'm seriously just kidding right now). You're scary! Flirting is hard! Guys like me aren't that good at it! I don't want to deceive you by acting like I'm super confident and wow you with my flirt skills! Why don't you try it for once...?

The exception is older women. I bet you're interested in why I, an innocent young man such as myself is embroiled in such nefarious affairs as flirting with older women? Well because ever since I've become more confident, I've been beating them off with a stick! Seriously, it's as if they've got a radar in their brain for guys like me! I don't even initiate (imagine my fear with a girl my own age, let alone a world-worn battle woman with wrinkles and distinction and all that). They leave nothing to the imagination. Normally it'd be great. I mean, they're female. And they're making the first move. And what's this? I can understand that they're interested in me? And they don't care that I'm not super confident? Whaaat? However, I kid you not, almost every mature woman who has hit on me in the last year has been married, engaged or at least had children. What's up with that you scoundrels? That's where flirting gets tricky. Technically flirting is harmless. You're finding out if you like each other. In the case of the male population, we liked 90% of all girls. It's nothing the other person doesn't already know. No harm no foul right? And yet it still feels morally so very wrong. For me, I won't go there. Even if I knew it wasn't leading anywhere, I still wouldn't go there. That's the grey area with flirting where I believe it's still a good rule that you have to be single. I mean, I certainly would feel insecure or sad or whatever if my wife were flirting with another guy. Although you could argue about trust and all that. Still, it's an area of flirting I won't go.

And thus it is my forever torment. Getting hit on by married women who are off limits, or not flirting with girls who don't flirt with me either. Awesome. So in conclusion, today we have learnt that my love life still sucks and that flirting is hard for me. Sob. That said, watch this space. Flirting is all about confidence; confidence in myself and now, confidence in my romantic skills. I guess once I exercise the "flirt muscle", perhaps even my fears of being terrible as a flirter will too dissipate as my past insecurities have. Will there be a Flirting Part Two: Steven Gets 'Game'? Who knows! Stay tuned...