Self-irony - again...

I can't stop thinking what a brilliant decision it was to stop taking myself so goddamn serious all the time.... It was a decision I took this summer, when I was manic as h*ll and pretty much a tornado of notsleeping, noteating, oversocialising and doing everything 200%.

Well, maybe not so much a decision as a realisation, I realised that if I would keep on taking myself as serious as I have all my life I will become utterly miserable. It just didn't work when I constantly fell off bikes, dived into the nightclub headfirst (I didn't see the step) after avoiding the place for about 2 years [yes I landed flat on the ground, got up, laughed and said 'Well that was a hell of an entrance!'], constantly walked/rushed/ran into things and hurt myself, talked too much, said the 'wrong' things, talked too loud etc etc etc.

In order to NOT be constantly mortified and embarrased I decided to just start shrugging things off. And it worked pretty well. I might have taken it a bit over the top for a while, a little bit of social akwardness and embarassment is healtly I think, but it tought me something very very valuable - The ability to laugh at myself. And the ability to let people laugh at/with me, without being too hurt.

Fact is we all do stupid and silly and unthought about things, all the time, every day. Little things. Big things. Some things are too embarrasing to share, and some things are hilarious to share with your best friends, because you know they will laugh. Because serving up a really good embarrasing story to your friends is like serving up a good dinner - you know what your friends like, how to make them feel happy and comfortable, and by offering this good dinner/good story you give them a little bit of respite from the seriousness of the world. Also, laughing is good for the health - so you lenghten their lives!(:

See, there aren't really any BAD things about not taking yourself TOO seriously! I like lectures, and I wanted to give this little 'don't take yourself/or me too serious' lecture before telling you the 'laughing at myself moment' which highlighted my day;

So I went to vote. I haven't voted in Finland for a long long time, and I wasn't legible to vote in England, so basically I haven't voted in any election since I was about 18 or 19. The seriousness of the situation made me a little frazzleed. I feel out of place in very stern/adult situations which I don't know how they work, and it makes me awkward. I say wrong things, do wrong things. But I handled the situation quite well by saying 'I haven't voted for a while' when I was frazzling about with the votingpaperthingie and didn't know if I needed an envelope (WHY do they have them on the table if you're NOT supposed to take one?).

So anyway, wrote my number on my piece of paper and went up to the lady which I imagined I was supposed to give the voting ballot to. She had a massive stamp and stamppad. I didn't see anywhere to put my vote so I guessed I would just give it to her. The massive stampinkpad looked intimidating to me, and my frazzled brain just thought 'do what you do in nightclubs' so I put my hand down to be stamped. before realising that OBVIOUSLY she wanted to stamp my VOTE not my hand, THIS IS NOT A NIGHTCLUB ANNA-KARIN! So I laughed, she laughed, and I said something along the lines of 'I haven't voted for a long time'. And I giggled to myself for about 2 minutes afterwards, because it was such a silly thing to do, but hey, at least I voted!

Note to self; if the sight of a stamppad makes you stretch your hand out in an instant, you frequent nightclubs to often.