NaNoWriMo Day 3: Please Stop the Small Talk

So, this is late.

No, I did not stop writing two days in.

I’m just socially exhausted, but you’ll see why when you read ahead.

Day 3: Please stop the small talk

Today’s agenda included going to work, going to an event about 50 miles away, then staying over at a friend’s place. You can already see why this month is perfect to talk about my day.

(Standard blog contents (probably) when I’m not doing this:

Hi, so I went to work, I fixed this really stupid bug.

I came back home and I saw a bit of Castle. Let me talk to you about why Castle is an asshole.

Okay, I’ll try to get more words next day.)

I’m partially joking, but it’s true. I like staying at home, cooking, and watching old shows that I can 

call out for making remarks which wouldn’t work nowadays.

Work was uneventful, so I shall start in the middle of the day, when I took a Lyft to the train station. The person driving was super nice, and worked as a part-time makeup artist. I immediately told her what I tell all people who do makeup:

That’s amazing, I wish I could do it, but no time.

She then complimented me on my brows and eyelids (I like my brows, but I didn’t know my eyelids were good too, thanks person!)

On the train to Dallas, I technically had a book that I was supposed to read through the whole journey, but there’s something about a train ride that slowly lulls you to sleep. My sister will whole-heartedly agree by changing it to any moving vehicle (that would not be an over-exaggeration).

Although I woke up in the middle of my (not) nap to make a note, which I find supremely funny:

Add 26 to your soft boye playlist. It’s a (not) banger

Something super interesting happened on my way to school, which I honestly find amazing.

This person was walking with me to the bus stop, and mentioned that they had seen me in the school library before. I was polite and courteous, mainly because I didn’t know who they were.

We then got to talking, and I found out that she was a 70 year old lady who was doing research in the School of Public Health. She also told me that she used to live in New Delhi with her husband and travel to Lahore back in the 70s before she moved back to America.

This was already #goals, because a 70 year old lady doing research and rocking at it? That’s amazing!

I asked her about her research and she told me, “I’m doing research on marginalized immigrant and foreign doctors. I think it’s unfair that they have to do school in their country, come here and do more school, and they’re still considered less fit compared to their American counterparts.” 

         She made a good comment about how stereotypical Americans compliment your accent, but the truth is that they have an accent, too. It’s just that they feel that they’re the default accent. It was a #tooReal statement to me, especially because I currently live in a place that does not have a lot of non-American people.

This talk about white/American being the default somehow flowed into the rest of the day without me even subtly planning it.

Our guest for the event was Leshawnda Larkin, an African American person who is a Senior Marketing Consultant at Samsung. (I keep saying event like a weirdo, I’m a Founding Member of Women in VR – Dallas #humblebrag, and this was our event held during TechWeek Dallas).

While also talking about AR and VR products, the topic of being a person of color in tech, as well as being the only woman on her team came up.  She spoke about how diversity isn’t just a phase, but it’s something that is important considering literally all the different people that do exist in real life. That the default hand in a game need not be white, but could be a hand of color.

It’s something that I noticed while developing VR applications, that most of the hands on TurboSquid (a site to get 3D models) are primarily white. The ones that aren’t white are grey because that’s the default avatar skin.

If I continue to do work that involves a human skin component, I will make sure to add an interaction where people can choose their skin color, because they technically can play the game with white hands in the VR space, but they don’t need to, if it can be helped, in my opinion.

As I said earlier, talk of diversity continued through my evening involuntarily. I was talking to a friend after a long time, and our conversation turned to shows (that’s also how our friendship started in the first place – with Doctor Who.)

We were talking about different shows, and went onto Black-ish. I spoke about how the fact that it’s representing Black people is amazing, but the fact that it lifts one representation by putting down other things seemed not so nice to me.

(To expand slightly, avoid this bracket if you don’t want to be spoiled [not that it’s a ‘spoiler’], but the general plotline of each episode is that the Dad of the family is uncomfortable with something because he grew up in a mostly Black neighborhood, and his kids are involved with people who aren’t just Black. But, his discomfort grows to magnanimous levels where he calls talking about emotions gay, or literally has to remove his shirt and look muscular to have the sex talk with his son, because it’s talking about stuff that he would rather not talk about. It might work for most people, but I was bored of the same shtick through 9 episodes, no matter how good the diversity is).

Honestly, to all the companies that say they don’t want to invest in diversity because of the extra issues that come with, you’ll just end up with a version of ‘Pepsi’ or ‘Dove’ which could have been avoided easily if you had some non-white people look at it first.

(I also mean, don’t make it a Glee/Pretty Little Liars/Every ABC show ever situation where there’s one token colored person. That sucks).

I don’t know why I went on this rampage about diversity to companies, because it’s not like they’re reading this blog right now, waiting for those ‘perfect tidbits to make our company the best, by Varshini’. (Yes, sarcasm)

Going back to the event, I get so socially exhausted while having to stay ‘on’ all the time. It’s really fun to meet new people and get their opinions on different things, and I love helping out for this group I’m a part of, but you can’t really be completely authentic. At least some part of you is faking it, because you cannot have that kind of enthusiasm while talking to 5-10 different people in a matter of 20-30 minutes.

The most you can do is make some small talk, or promote yourself because both are impersonal, and what works when you’ve known the person for all of 2 seconds. But, even that gets so exhausting. I’m not sure if this is one of those ambivert things or if everyone goes through it and just are better at doing it through the years.

I do want to shout out to the people who plan on reading all of these posts. It no longer feels like me shouting out into the void (which is kinda what Tumblr is) but I’m actually getting some commentary back, which helps me think about how I want to phrase my future posts.

I don’t have a lot more to say for today, but I have some out of context statements through the day, which I thought I’d put here, mainly because I find it to be funny:

1. With this top, if I wear a choker, I wonder if I’ll look like a high schooler from the 90s. Or one from last year.

2. Mariah Carey’s ‘All I want for Christmas’ started playing on my Spotify. When is the holiday police coming for me?

3. My (friend’s) niece went Trick or Treating and instead of saying ‘Trick or treat’, she just said, “Can I have some (candy)?”

4. It’s like you just hide in the back and never talk to us.

Day 4 (was supposed to be tomorrow/actually today) is going to be good, because I’m going wedding dress shopping for a friend! I’m super hyped about it. (Also, considering that it’s 10 am on Day 4, I already have the start of my next blog article).

For the song of this week, I went back to listen to 26 while awake, and it really is a nice (not) banger.

Leave me a comment (Constructive criticism, remarks, opinions for future posts, everything is welcome!)

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