It’s interesting to see how open some people are online, yet there are plenty of people who are fairly private, too. Interacting with others online is different than interacting with others in a more “personal” setting, for you can pick and choose what facets of your personality you want to expose more online. It’s not like when meeting with someone face to face; an online persona can be completely different than an offline one!

I personally don’t like to get too personal online. I may mention a few personal things here and there, but usually only on VegOpt or LiveJournal, and not in any other online place. I talk a lot about my travels, but I only briefly mention general things about school and/or work, and I never go into specific detail about my friends and family. I just don’t see the need to do so, nor would I be comfortable into being totally open about certain aspects and details about my personal life online. I do not lie about things that go on in my offline life, I just try to avoid talking about the specifics.

Question of the Week: How open are you with sharing your offline/personal life with the online world?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Last night while I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, one of my floormates said, “Hey, Manda!” and looked expectantly at me with an answer. As my mouth was filled with foamy toothpaste, I hurriedly finished brushing my teeth and mumbled a semi-intelligible, “Oh, hey.” The girl continued merrily chatting along as I washed my face, and I gave half-hearted answers to whatever questions she was asking me, because every time a question came up I either had a mouth full of toothpaste or I was busy rinsing off my facial cleanser with water.

If I see someone else in the bathroom brushing their teeth or washing their face, I don’t feel obligated to strike up a conversation, or even greet the person with a hello. I don’t go to the bathroom to start conversations, I go to either use the toilet, shower, brush my teeth, and/or wash my face, so I never bother with niceties when I see my floormates in the bathroom. I simply go about my business as if they weren’t even there. Plus, I find it incredibly awkward to have to answer someone with a toothbrush in my mouth as it’s not exactly the easiest scenario to reply to someone with, so I always try to avoid putting others in that position!

Question of the Week: Do you find it uncomfortable when someone greets you when you are in the middle of doing something like brushing your teeth or washing your face?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Last week, a few things in real life went a little bit astray, leaving me feeling stressed, nauseated, and sick. All I wanted to do was stay in bed forever and ever and not have to face the world. I had never felt like that before, and it scared me¹. Even though I knew why I felt emotionally drained and unequipped to deal with life, it was still an awful, awful feeling, to not want to get up and get on with my daily life. All I wanted to do was hide in my bed and not leave my room, possibly forever.

Everyone has days like that, ones where the desire to stay in bed and avoid the world is greater than the desire to get up and proceed to deal with daily life. Only those days don’t occur to me very often, if at all, and I was freaked out that I was feeling this way. I had no idea what to do, or how worried I should be, or even if something was wrong with me. Filled with doubt and uncertainty, I decided that I should call my mother and ask her for advice, because I was terrified of what all of this meant, if it meant anything.

I explained my situation to my mom, and she gave me the best advice I could have gotten in that situation. She told me that I needed to get out of bed and face the world, because the longer I stayed in bed and shied away from everyone and everything, the bigger and scarier it would seem. I had to take steps to be strong, and get over whatever fear I had of facing the world and just march on with life. And even though I hoped she would tell me it was okay to stay in bed forever and ever, she was right. I couldn’t let things affect me to the point where it crippled the way I deal with my daily lifestyle. And the first step to doing that was getting out of bed.

It was really the best advice.

1. Not to worry though, it was only a very brief phase and everything has since worked itself out. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I always find it incredibly awkward when someone knocks on the door of the toilet stall I’m in. I know that people knock just to see if anyone is inside the stall, and that knocking is the politest way to find out, but I still find it horribly awkward. I never know what to say in response to a knock on the stall door. I know that I should say something along the lines of “Someone’s here!” or “Just a moment!” but really… I can’t bring myself to do it. I just can’t.

I’ve tried to answer “Someone’s here!” when someone knocks on the stall door. I said it once, and I felt so incredibly embarrassed for no particular reason, and it was awful, just awful. It wasn’t the fact that I was using the toilet, it was the fact that, well, someone was trying to talk to me while I was on the toilet. And it’s not just the fact that I cannot bring myself to answer when someone knocks on the stall door, but I always feel mortified knocking on another person’s stall door and hearing that person exclaim, “Occupied, sorry!” I feel rude for knocking on the door and interrupting the person, even though I know I shouldn’t because it’s not like I’m opening the door and barging in on them. Now that would be rude.

Whenever someone knocks on my stall door, I usually try and bang things around so that people can hear the noises and figure out for themselves that someone is in there rather than having me proclaim that yes, I am in the toilet stall, and no, I am not quite finished yet, so please wait a moment or two. I rattle the toilet paper dispenser, shut the toilet lid loudly, and turn up the sink taps so that the running water makes a loud noise as I wash my hands. It’s not exactly the easiest way to signal that I am still occupied in the toilet stall, but for me, it’s much easier than vocalizing my toilet stall occupancy.

Question of the Week: When someone knocks on the door of the toilet stall you are in, what do you say? Is it easy for you to speak up, or easier for you to say nothing at all and hope that the person will realize on their own that the stall is occupied?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Originally published at blog@excuses-untold.org. Please leave any comments there.

Ah, Sunday. The day of rest, or more specifically, the day to recuperate from the weekend. Ideally weekends are for recovering from the week, but the best weekends are the wild and crazy ones that require you to spend Sunday recovering from them, right?

Usually, my Sundays involve me waking up at noon, and then lounging around in bed for the following hour. I’ve never been one to be able to jump out of bed as soon as I wake up, I need about half an hour whenever I wake up to warm up to the idea that eventually, I must get out of bed and start the day. I’m not usually hungry after I wake up, but I’ll go to my school cafeteria anyway to get lunch. After eating, I return to my dorm room, promising myself that I will make some progress on my homework. I never do homework on Friday nights and occasionally I’ll start it on a Saturday afternoon, but Sunday is really my day to get all my studying done. I’ll start working on my assignments Sunday afternoon, but more often than not my Sunday work ethic involves being easily distracted friends, Facebook, my cell phone, etc., and I never really manage to finish my homework until late Sunday night.

By the time dinnertime rolls around, I usually find that I’ve spent my Sunday afternoon relaxing in bed and surfing the Internet or watching a movie instead of completing my homework in a timely manner. I find that’s the beauty of a Sunday afternoon, though. It’s a perfect time to unwind from the weekend and rest up for the coming week, and there’s never any pressure to get anything done on a Sunday afternoon, because Sunday nights are for frantically finishing the homework you should have done much earlier in the weekend! I love being lazy on a Sunday afternoon, relaxing is the perfect way to wile away the day. There’s always the evening to spend getting work done, so the afternoon can be spent doing nothing whatsoever and enjoying every moment of it!

Question of the Week: What’s your favorite way of spending a Sunday afternoon? What is a normal Sunday afternoon like for you?