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Transcript

The faces I see in cars · Who is Andie Green?

• 0:00
  Good morning! And welcome to this week's episode of "Who is Andie Green?" hosted by Andie Green.
• 0:16
  This week I wanted to talk about something that I noticed when I was driving to go get lunch today.
• 0:21
  I've had some issues with eating food, and so I didn't want anything that was at my parent's house, which I am currently living at, slightly unfortunately and slightly fortunately. And so I decided to go get something else cuz I was like, "I'm not going to eat anything here, but I need to eat something" and so I went and I drove and I was not in a good mood.
• 0:40
  It's been kind of a dead day. I'm not entirely sure why, like last night I was in a really good mood, and the last two days I've been in a good mood. I feel like overall, I've been in a pretty decent headspace the last little while.
• 0:53
  Which is kind of funny considering that a lot of people I talk to are like, "hey, you need to be on anxiety medication like, now." And I don't want to be.
• 1:01
  Unfortunate, truly. I know I should be, and I don't want to be like my dad in that aspect because he refuses to take medication for his anxiety but he will take pretty much everything else in the world. But I feel like that's kind of where I'm at. Because I don't want to have to rely on something to be calm, so I'm trying really hard to do therapy for myself. Because yet again, I can't afford therapy.
• 1:26
  And so I've decided that I'm gonna do pretty much as much as I can that scares me. So exposure therapy! And that's been hard, but I've felt pretty good about it. I feel like it's working mostly well, and I feel like I'm enjoying life for the most part, and i think that's the most important thing.
• 1:46
  However, back to the story. I was driving to go get food and I was thinking about the car in front of me. Because I have this thing that I've done my entire life where, when I look at cars' lights (their headlights, their taillights), I kind of imagine them as faces.
• 2:02
  And I was thinking about this account on instagram. I don't know what the account is called unfortunately. I really should follow them next time they pop up on my for you page. But on their account they post pictures of mundane things and then they give them little captions like, "today I saw this object doing this, or this thing feeling this."
• 2:23
  And so it's basically personifying little things that are either cute or horrific. And I was thinking about that, and I was like, "why do I do that to cars?" I love little things, and I don't want to say that just as little things physically. I like little concepts, I guess.
• 2:40
  On my instagram (my private instagram) I have a highlight that is titled, "little things" and if you go on there you can see sunsets and posters that people put on the walls. Stickers, or the way the rain is on a lamppost. Things like that! I hadn't really thought about it until today. Why do I do that? Why do I enjoy these things?
• 3:02
  Why do I give cars personalities based off of the way their headlights are shaped? And the way I see their faces with the headlights, the license plate, and then just the bumper. How do I do that? And so I was thinking about that. And then I was thinking about how I am going to tie it into my world, to try and slow down and try and calm down.
• 3:23
  And that usually isn't that prevalent, but then today I was like, "I'm not in a good mood. I want to life up my mood a little bit." And so the first thing I thought of as I left was to look for the little things. Which is not a great thing to do when you're driving. You should be focusing on driving, but it's okay. I was fine, I was safe. All was well.
• 3:40
  These cars, they're just shapes. They're objects. And yet, people name their cars all the time. I identify cars faces and then I give them personalities based on the shape of their face. Kinda like what people do even in real life to other people, which is kind of unfortunate because I'm sure a lot of the people who have different face shapes are probably some of the most amazing people.
• 4:05
  I think it's unfortunate that in society we've kind of normalized putting labels on supposedly "other" groups of people even though we're all people, we're all humans, we're all on the same earth. In different places, but we're all here! We're all alive, except for those that have passed on and those that will never live.
• 4:24
  Which is quite an unfortunate thing to think about. That leads me to my older sister, who died before she was born (my mom had a miscarriage). And that's something that I think about a lot. Because if she hadn't died, I wouldn't be born. We had the same due date a year apart, and part of me wonders: was she another person? Or was I trying to come too early?
• 4:46
  I think there's a weird part of me that's like, "I really want to know because I want to meet her and I want to know if I would have had a best friend." But then the other part of me is like, "I shouldn't meet her." At least, in this body I can't, because if she was here I wouldn't be.
• 5:00
  And that's just something so...it's such an odd feeling that I sit with really often. And I don't know where I got that from. I think I was following personifying things. I guess it's just a way of understanding the world, and that's very interesting.
• 5:15
  Okay, for example: when I was buying my car, I had a couple reasons for why I was buying my car. One of them being that I wanted a car that I could go on roadtrips with and my dad's 2006 Toyota corolla with an unknown number of miles was not going to be that car. And so I started looking, but then my little sister was about to get her license and I was like, "Well, I don't want her to have a better car than me." So I went car shopping.
• 5:37
  And I learned a lot about what different cars looked like. I definitely learned a lot about makes and models and stuff. Things like that. I learned how to identify car types. And then I also noticed that a lot of the cars that I was looking at, I didn't like them aesthetically, which is unfortunate and that shouldn't be a big deal, especially if they're going to be a good car to have. But that was something I was really focused on because I wanted the vibes to match.
• 6:02
  So I'm going to ask: do you go off of vibes and why? how? How do you scale the vibe to what you want and what you don't want. I am not entirely sure how my vibe detection works because sometimes it's really really wacky. For example, the other night I was going through some of my extra chapsticks and I was trying them and I was like "ugh this is gross" and so I threw most of them away and I realized: "Was that just me being in a bad sensory spot and not wanting to have things on my lips?"
• 6:30
  And then that kind of projected into "Oh, this one's just gross. I'm not going to have it." One of them I know for sure was a sensory thing cuz it was just so thick and it did not work well with my lips and I hated it. And so I threw that one away. But then that kind of influenced all of the other ones that I tried and so I'm curious how you guys go off of vibes.
• 6:47
  I wonder if it's largely internal versus external and if the perception you have of things is not based on what you're actually seeing but the thing that the thing you're seeing is reminding you of. That was a really weird way to say that. I'm always going to go back to perception and being seen cuz that's kind of one of the things I'm really interested in right now.
• 7:07
  Where I am having a hard time being perceived, which is making it even harder to feel like I'm being seen or being known. And part of me is okay with that. I downloaded a dating app last night just because I wanted to see how I would feel doing it, and I realized I don't want to date for a long time. Which is something that I was like, "oh yeah, that'll be a good thing for me." I hadn't been single in a very long time.
• 7:29
  So I downloaded the app to kind of be like, "how do I feel about this?" It's been...I don't know how long it's been. A little over a month? But I do want to point out that this month has felt like the longest month of my life and every single week when I work I have... I usually have one day off in the middle of the week and so on Tuesdays it's my last day before my one day off. And so I was like, oh yeah it's chill, it's whatever. And then my day off and I go back and it feels like I've had a week long between seeing my coworkers.
• 7:55
  And that's not normal. Time is definitely passing very very slowly for me right now, which is partially a good thing, partially an awful thing. Mostly a confusing thing. And so...where was I going with this?
• 8:07
  Okay I just went back and I remembered what I was talking about! I was talking about perception versus being seen and how that ties into dating. And when I went back on the app last night, I was just so exhausted of being like, "I don't want to put all of these things about myself for people to just read them and I don't know who the people are. Likely, I'm not going to meet any of them in person, when what I'm really craving right now I think is just being alone."
• 8:33
  I'm realizing very much lately that I don't really want to hang out with a ton of people in person. I kind of just want to be, and I want to create and I want to think. And while that's a great thing and I love doing those, I know that eventually I'm going to be craving the people and I will have disregarded them
• 8:52
  because of where I'm at right now. So I'm trying to find a balance between giving myself time to rest, to be alone, to make things, to read things, to think. But then also having days where I can just be with people all the time. And I think I've done a decent balance of that lately.
• 9:10
  For example, I had a couple days in the last couple weeks where I spent the entire day with people, which was exhausting and also very rewarding. Going down to another city to hang out with my childhood best friend...that was exhausting because I didn't feel like I could be myself around them but then I was also enjoying the creativity that was there.
• 9:29
  And then this last weekend I went and I did something that I'd never done before was where I went to a choir, a sapphic choir. And I went alone. I had no idea what I was signing up for. So I went there, kind of just to try. I wanted to try it and see what it was like. I met a couple of people there who were just amazing. And I walked in with them and they were so sweet and kind and I didn't sit by them during the actual choir part because they have different voices than me, and I was in the high part, they were in the low part.
• 9:56
  I probably should have been a little bit more in the middle part, looking back on it, but I can sing the high part so I just did that. And so afterwards, I kind of just tagged along with these people that I walked in with and I made some new friends because of that! Granted, they were complete strangers.
• 10:11
  I still don't know them. I know their names, and I know their gender identities, but I really don't know them. I just let myself be perceived by them in the pursuit of "maybe I can make some friends? Maybe these friends that I might make will see me how I want to be seen." And part of that is putting my own foot forward.
• 10:33
  And I have had a hard time doing that because of anxiety, because I am scared of being perceived. When I show up and I try to show who I really am, it's next to impossible for people to see that deeply when we've only met on a surface level. And I find that the same thing with dating apps. When you're on there, you're trying to put in things that are deep about yourself, or you're not, and people will only see what they want to see.
• 11:02
  They see your face and they're like, "oh, this is not my type" and then they scroll through what you say and maybe what you say is what their type is personality wise, but they've already got that disposition of, "I don't like this person's face," why would they put in any effort to learn who you really are?
• 11:18
  And that's something that I've been trying to work through myself, of putting perceptions and first impressions away because first impressions (while they are very important) are also oftentimes very flawed. I find that a lot about when people talk about astrology, too. "Oh what's your star sign?" "This is my star sign, yada yada yada."
• 11:35
  I enjoy talking about that. I enjoy star signs. I think it's fun to be like, "Oh yeah, I'm learning this thing about my star sign that is a lot like me in this way, but completely opposite of me in this way." I like talking about it, but I don't like having that be a huge thing because people often know basic things about each star sign and not everyone follows them, which kind of makes me go into a rabbit hole of destiny.
• 12:01
  Like, what is your destiny? Who were you meant to be when you were born? That's not something that is just set in stone. Life is always changing, life is always evolving. You are always evolving, I am always evolving. This is actually terrifying to know that I am always evolving even though I've had pieces of me in the past that I try to disregard or I do entirely disregard.
• 12:21
  So, that's part of why I'm like, "perception of other people is such a central part of how we live." When we put what we know of other people into objects, that is both one of the most amazing and calming things, but also one of the most narrow-minded things we can do. What an interesting thing to say!
• 12:42
  I don't want to sound like I'm preaching. I don't want to preach this. I want to just put my thoughts out and I want to see what other people think and I have an awful flaw that when other people say things I disagree with I kind of just disregard it or disregard them. I'm trying to let go of that. I'm working on it. I think part of that that I'm trying to do to work on that is when I'm online, instead of kind of gravitating towards the typical people that I will watch their content, I'm trying to kind of turn where I'm...like who I'm looking for.
• 13:14
  Which is hard, because obviously the algorithm will do what it thinks you want, what your attention will crawl to. So it's been kind of difficult, but it is something that I have been working on. And granted I'll still go back to my content creators that are comfort for me, that I know I love the things that they talk about and the things that they make, and I will go back to that and I will kind of look for that in each of the people that I'm observing.
• 13:39
  I guess. That I'm perceiving them, not really seeing. What a strange thing, what a strange world. I wonder how people think and how different types of thinking kind of influence this. Because when you go and look at someone and you get a perception of them, I wonder if that perception changes based off of if you think in pictures, or if you think in words, or if you think of a combination of them. Or if you think in a completely different way that I've never thought of. I wonder how that affects this.
• 14:05
  One of my comfort creators has aphantasia, which means that he cannot picture things in his mind if they're not right in front of his eyes. And that's kind of an interesting thing to think about because I wonder if he has a little bit less of this bias towards other people because he can't picture other things. I wonder if he's more inclined to like a bigger variety of people than some people who have photographic memories and can remember their third grade teacher who was abusive to them, which that's not me. That's just a random example I came up with.
• 14:38
  I wonder if that changes between those two types of people. If not being able to see in your head things that have affected you in the past, changes how you see other people. But then you can think of it the same way with words. If you think only in words, or like a stream of consciousness, train of thought, inner monologue, are you still gonna have that same perception thing? I have like an awkward combination of both. There are times in my life where I've only thought in words, and I'll kind of be reading a book in my head,
• 15:06
  but that was a longer time ago. I still sometimes do that, but I do mostly think in inner monologue. And then my imagination picture wise, is kind of grainy. There's not a lot of detail, which is kind of unfortunate because a lot of the things I want to remember, I have a hard time remembering outside of smells or feelings in my body or just specific words that I've tied to it, but there's also the aspect of, "oh! I can see this thing that reminds me of this past time, which is a great nostalgia sometimes.
• 15:36
  But it also can be a horrible thing when I'm looking back and saying, I didn't like that. This thing here, which could potentially be a person who is amazing, has this tiny little aspect of them that reminds me of this thing that was huge to be in the past, and I don't like it. I think it's odd. Cuz I'm sure everyone has a kind of perception of that, but I wonder if other people have bigger influences from their past that they notice when they observe other people or I wonder if people have very low influences.
• 16:08
  So if you're listening to this and you have thoughts on that, I would love to hear them cuz that sounds like totally out of this world. That sounds so interesting for me to hear from other people and for other people to just yap about. I love listening to people. But I also have a hard time shutting up, which I'm noticing now because I've covered a lot of the things that were on my notes to talk about, but I'm just in a mood to keep talking.
• 16:30
  I would love to tie that to something philosophical about how I see the world and how I'm really bad at silence and how I am just so self-obsessed, and all this, but I really don't want to do that. I don't want to say I'm self obsessed because I'm working on not being self obsessed specifically with ego. But then I'm also working on being a little more self obsessed so I can be more confident and have more fun in life.
• 16:56
  I feel like both things can be true at once. And then I also, what was the other thing I said? I don't know! I don't want to stop talking because talking is comforting, and when there's silence, it's scary. And perhaps that's why so many people have to sleep with white noise or they have to work with an earbud, or music, which I am sometimes. But sometimes, I have noticed that I struggle with extra input.
• 17:24
  I struggle with that. And when I am creating that input for my ear, it's a little bit more calming. I wonder if other people find talking as calming. But I also wonder if this talking-as-calming, is only possible in certain times or ways. Because I have had really bad experiences with talk therapy. They tend to make my thoughts worse because I feel like I have to rehash everything that I've already hashed out in the past when I go to therapy. Which is part of why I don't go to therapy. Also, because it's expensive.
• 17:57
  I wonder if the talking as an outlet is different than a talking as a processing. Because right here I feel like I'm talking as a processing. I'm telling s story, I'm learning things about it, and I'm kind of going off on a million different tangents, but then when I'm talking about something to let it out, that feels so much different cuz depending on how much OCD is latching onto things in my head, it's not a relief. It's exhausting, it's painful because I can't stop repeating things.
• 18:30
  And I would love to learn how to repeat myself less, and how to not be mad when other people repeat themselves over and over again. Because I know that I struggle with that. I struggle with repeating myself. I do it so much, and I want to get better at accepting that "yes, it's okay to repeat myself." And yes, it's okay for other people to repeat themselves. I don't have to be mad at it. But I also, at the same time, want to speak more eloquently, more clearly, and more calmly. And I guess that's part of why I'm doing this.
• 19:04
  Anyways, thank you for listening to this week's episode of "Who is Andie Green?" I have enjoyed this. And I don't know how I'm going to be doing sign offs regularly, but I guess I will see you, or talk to you, or have half of a perception of you, next week.