March 26, 2000 -- 8:15 PM EST

I'm feeling a lot better. Tomorrow will be a long day -- work is getting busy again.

No biking this weekend, and I'm kind of disappointed about that.

Oh, well.

My MIL gave me a bunch of little sampler things from ingredients.com and I have them around my desk and they smell really good.

It's also been really hot, and I dread the long evil summer up ahead. I'm not thinking baout anything astoundingly deep or anything astoundingly amazing. I've been too addled with fever to think much of anything.

[...]

I can understand why teenage kids are extremely worried about what people think of them -- HS society is such a peer pressure sort of environment. I don't understand why people who are older than that are still stuck in that mindset though.

When you grow up, you get to choose your job. You get to choose where you live. You get to choose your environment. You get to pick who you want to hang out with for hours on end. As a kid, much of your time is stuck in classes with these people whom you may or may not like and it is out of your control. Assholes can make your life hell.

But as an adult, you get to pick.

Even when you don't like it, you can pick to quit a bad job environment and get a different job, find a better environment. A kid can't just up and quit school.

So I can see where a kid would worry a lot about what peers think of them, because if they think badly of you they can make your life hell.

No adult wakes up in the morning thinking, "Oh, let's hang out with the HS assholes I used to know today, so they can make me feel like shit."

Strange thoughts in my head.

[...]

Today in chat one of the teens wondered "What if I lose a lot of weight and after all that I'm still ugly?"

I didn't really know how to answer that one.

Isn't it like the other old song and dance? After I'll lose 20 lbs, I'll do THIS. After I lose 20 lbs I'll do THAT? If you think you are ugly now, what makes you think you won't still think the same 20 lbs later? And if you can't do THIS or THAT now, what makes you think you can do it 20 lbs less?

The problem isn't weight. The problem is self-perception, self-esteem, self-image.

But you just don't run up to someone and say, "Get some self-esteem!" If you don't have much of it, it's not like you can just whip it out of the air. Otherwise you would have done that already!

Here's a self-esteem test.

I have to think some more on the esteem thing.

~Astrophe