The other day my sister stopped me in mid-speech as I was explaining some science thing to her and said "I can't explain it, but you're so Veronica right now. So you!"

I took it as a compliment (although I'm not sure what it had to do with the science stuff) because I have virtually no idea what my personality is, and it's reassuring to know that it actually exists. I have no idea how people perceive me, for the most part. I credit this to my general lack of self-awareness and my tendency walk around in a daze when I'm thinking hard, which is frequently. This leads to a very strange state of being. As a kid I thought I was pretty much the strangest person there was, so repulsive that no one would want to be friends with me. I slowly dropped that idea, but my self-blindness made it difficult. It was more of a logical deduction than anything else. These people like me, and they've got good taste, so I can't be that bad. These people treat me like everyone else, so I must be somewhat normal. I get hit on at parties, so I must be decent-looking. Etc.

The people I like most tend to have very natural personalities, ones that they are seldom fully aware of, so not knowing exactly how I come across can't be such a bad thing. Over the last few years I've learned to stop relying on other people's opinions of me to judge my own worth, but my self-awareness hasn't significantly increased, so I'm left with almost nothing to go on. After spending a good deal of time trying to figure out how I was supposed to reach an understanding of myself from an outside perspective, it dawned on me that I didn't really need to. I'm usually aware enough to avoid offending people, and I must have some kind of personality, so why not just let it go and express itself? I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.

As for Joyce Carol Oates, I'm not particularly offended by her writing; she's just not so amazing that she should be quoted on the back of every book printed in this decade as though she were the New York Times. I've seen her bullshit quotes on the backs of some of my favorite books ("a story by William Goyen is like nothing in this world but a story by William Goyen") and I don't think she has the authority to judge writers that are clearly better than her--and yet she's always given a prime spot on the sleeve. I keep reading her books, trying to figure out what the great mystery is, and I'm consistantly dissappointed. No matter how hard I try, I can't find any redeeming quality to her work, and I'm a pretty sharp reader. There are tons of mediocre books and mediocre authors out there, but none so celebrated and so publicized as her. A friend who I respect deeply recently suggested to me that I look into a certain college because she was teaching there. The whole thing is very frustrating.