Think Geek

See what I did there? x3 Yes, this post will mention thinkgeek, the website, but also I'm referring to the fact that I'm trying to, you know, think...geek, as in reconnect with the geeky side of myself.

In high school, I was Geek. I was totally okay with my obsessiveness and nerdiness. I wore White Letters on Black T-shirts, along with shirts with Inuyasha or Zelda or Yoda or all these other things on them. T-shirts and boy pants. My backpack was decorated with patches and had so many pop-culture keychains on it that I would walk down the hallway and friends on the other end would know it was me approaching. I drew anime characters and comics during class, was very verbal about how many days remained until the release of the next Harry Potter book, I wore the One Ring around my neck and I doodled on my hands with jelly roll pens long after it was cool. I dressed up like Terra from Teen Titans one year for Halloween. I loved my teachers and always strove for the distinction as "teacher's pet." I found myself doing math problems for fun during the summer to keep myself from going crazy.

When I left high school and went to college, I found myself in a sea of remarkably ungeeky people. At least, not geeky the way my friends and I were geeky in high school. I felt out of place and I was terrified of being labelled as "the weird nerdy one" that no one would want to talk to. I abandoned the vast majority of my incredibly geeky shirts, to the point that I cut them up with the intent to make a quilt out of them, and replaced them with girlier clothes. I just about completely ceased drawing anime during classes, because stadium seating meant more people could watch over my shoulder (I've always been a sit-up-front kind of teacher's pet), and I thought that college was supposed to be hard and thus I should not be able to draw during class and still do well. (I always ended up drawing in the margins of my notebooks anyways, or surfing the internet when I switched to online notes).

I was a LOT happier in high school than I was in college. Apart from factors like "I felt like I was doing something worthwhile with my education" and "my friends in general were not dicks," I think a large portion of it was also that I felt comfortable being geek! I didn't feel any pressure to impress ANYONE. I was, for the most part, cool with myself and my White Text on Black Tshirts, my clacky keychains and my One Ring, my baggy boy pants and my flip-flops, even in winter. I had insecurities, sure, but what teenager, or person really, doesn't? The fact of the matter is, at that point in my life, I was far more secure in myself and my place in the world than I ended up being four years later.

I mean, there are some things now that I still just don't like that I did then. White text on black tshirts? Not so much, but if I can start accumulating more colorful shirts like this one from thinkgeek, then I would be very happy! The sound of clacky keychains? Nope. However, I do have an extensive collection of nerdtastic buttons that are just BEGGING to be displayed on a purse or something.

I really just want to feel okay with being geeky again. I want my brain to work the way it did in high school. And one day, I'm going to replace that incredibly tarnished the-gold-plating-is-falling-off One Ring with a solid gold one. :3