I’m a Freak

And there’s nothing I can do about it

When I post something that ends up having a life of its own, people will often drop in and give me a cyber high five and a compliment affirming my expertise in predicting what the public wants.

I always laugh when this happens. The articles that end up with dozens of comments or thousands of claps are the ones I thought no one would care about. And the ones that I thought were gonna knock people’s socks off are the ones that usually go unnoticed by most readers.

So when people compliment how well I know what the public wants, I just want to say, “If you only knew!”

I occasionally fall prey to feeling badly about this. I feel like there’s an inherent failure in being a content creator who doesn’t know what the public wants to consume. (Or doesn’t care…?) Isn’t that just an illustration of a bad businesswoman?

But I’m an artist, first, and I try to allow myself to be okay with that. Yes, I want and need my work to pay the bills, but also…it is an expression of my soul above all else and I need that spiritual, creative, emotional, and intellectual outlet.

Also…I’m strange. I happily acknowledge that. I’m a freak. A weirdo.

Recently, when I spent days writing a piece that I thought would go semi-viral and then proceeded to get less than 20 views, followed by another piece that I thought maybe would get 15 views, but ended up with more than 50 in just a few hours, I lamented to my mother that maybe I would always be struggling because hell if I knew what people wanted to read.

She said, “Honey…you’re a very strange person. You aren’t like most people on this planet. You’re probably always gonna be a little bit outside the crowd. And that’s okay.”

I felt the truth in her words. I’d always been like that — a loner, not just because of how introverted I am but because I really just don’t fit in with the crowd.

I’m weird.

When I was in high school, I loved to wear pinstriped pants and fitted blazers. I had a brief fling with a fantasy that I’d grow up to become a CEO and show my daughters that women can break the shit out of that glass ceiling.

The clothes suited me, too (excuse the pun). I was very serious — I never partied with friends, never smoked, never got drunk. I did my homework and liked to spend my free time working on my novels. I honestly never understood the whole “let loose and party thing.”

As you can imagine, I had few friends in high school. When I declined invitations to parties, or cigarettes passed to me at lunchtime, or a flask that appeared from someone’s backpack after school, people assumed I was judging them or that I thought I was better than them.

Honestly, though, it was so much more benign than that. I just wanted to be home, in a quiet atmosphere where I could work on my stories. I had asthma and didn’t want to provoke another attack by smoking. And there was no way I was gonna risk getting caught drinking by my parents who would’ve grounded me until I was 18 if I’d come home with booze on my breath.

I didn’t care what anyone else was doing and I wasn’t wasting time sitting around judging their moral character. But between my “aspiring CEO” outfits and my obsession with getting a 4.0 every semester, people thought I was a stuck-up bitch.

It’s funny to me to think of that, knowing how anxious and full of self-doubt I have always been. Have I ever thought I was better than anyone else? That’s laughable to me.

But I remember one day, after I transferred to a new school in my senior year, when I walked into the girls’ bathroom and all of a sudden, all the girls who had been standing in front of the mirrors, applying lipstick, stopped laughing and the room fell eerily silent, everyone giving me a suspicious side-eye.

They started filing out as I stood there, waiting for a stall to open up, and by the time the last girl passed, she paused, gave me a once-over and then burst into bubbly giggles.

“Oh my god,” she said, “you’re a student, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, worried at what she might say. “Why do you ask?”

“We all thought you were a new teacher all this time. That’s why everyone stops talking when you’re around. You have this really old-lady-stuck-up-bitch vibe about you.”

“No, I’m not stuck up, at all,” I assured, trying to put on my kindest smile, ignoring the “old lady” part of the comment.

“Your clothes are really stuck up,” she insisted, “and you’re super quiet. We just assumed. But now I think you’re just one of those shy freaks, is all.” She giggled again and clunked out of the room in her platform sandals.

I looked down at my pleated black pants, low-heeled black boots, and fitted trench coat and knew she was right. I was definitely a freak.

I’m still that girl in the bathroom. I’ve had to come to peace with the fact that I just don’t get it. It’s like my brain doesn’t compute. This is normal human behavior in 2020…and over here is Yael. Clearly, she has no idea what the fuck is going on.

Even when I “get it” — I know, for instance, what kinds of articles do really well, I know how I should dress and groom myself to make my brand more appealing, I know what I could say and do to improve my business even a little bit — I still don’t want to do it.

I know when I say that, people see Yael in her pinstriped pants. They hear me judging them. They think I’m behaving like an arrogant bitch.

I don’t know how to say this to make people believe me, but it’s not a judgment. I don’t care what other people write or how they dress or groom themselves or how they market themselves… I genuinely don’t much think about that and am usually too caught up in my own self-doubt to have time to judge other people’s choices.

All I’m saying is, checking the boxes I know I’m supposed to check just doesn’t hold much interest for me. And all I mean by that is, I’d rather write an article about taking photographs of owls that I know maybe two people will read than writing something about productivity hacks that will probably get lots of hits.

I don’t think that makes me arrogant. A freak, for sure, but not arrogant.

Either way, though…it feels problematic.

I was out in the woods two evenings ago, looking for some flowers to photograph before the summer season ends. To my delight, I heard a familiar screeching sound in the distance.

An owl.

It’s been two years since I was able to track and photograph an owl, so I wasn’t very hopeful that I’d find it, let alone capture it on film.

Happily, I found it right away and was able to take several photographs before it exhibited threatening behavior, trying to chase me off.

I was so excited by the images I’d captured, even though they weren’t particularly good (I couldn’t get the ISO right no matter what I did). I thought of how happy I would’ve been to have stayed out there for hours, following the owls, taking pictures.

“It is so fucking bizarre that you do that,” a friend of mine once said. “What kind of person enjoys wandering around in the woods for hours trying to capture photos of wildlife? You could be painting your nails, or reading, or watching Netflix, or hanging out with your family, or going to a bar to find a hot new partner. Why on earth would you spend that precious time alone in the woods?”

I knew from the tone of her voice that she was poking fun at me, but I also knew she was serious. She thinks it’s a waste of time. And truly, truly strange.

I actually get that a lot.

I don’t know what to say to that, though. In my mind, it makes perfect sense. Why on earth would I want to sit on my sofa waiting for my nails to dry when I could be out in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen with creatures that most people never lay eyes on?

And yet I know. I get it. It’s incredibly weird.

I don’t mind being weird. Out of touch. Completely unable to figure out what normal people want and should want.

Well, I don’t mind most of the time.

But sometimes…I wish could predict what people wanted to read about. I wish I could’ve walked into the girls’ room without making everyone go silent. I wish I knew someone who would love to grab their camera bag and head out into the woods with me.

In general, I think freaks are pretty interesting people. Freaks often do very interesting things in the world. Or, like me, maybe they’re not interesting, at all.

But I think I’d rather be a freak and be lonely than try to be someone I’m not.

Maybe that means I’ll always be a little out of touch, not a part of the crowd, someone who ends up being alone a lot. Someone who writes what she feels called to write and has no idea if that will actually interest others.

If it does, fantastic. I’m thrilled. And if not…well, I’ll still be over here by myself typing away, or maybe wandering in the woods alone, trying to capture a good photograph of an owl.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

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