Rant: The Honesty in Infamy

***Disclaimer***

This rant was written at 12:30pm in a hotel room. As always, take it for what it's worth

  In college, I was known but I never considered myself to be popular. I feel like this is still the case today, and I'm happy about that.

  I remember saying to my friends at the beginning of our sophomore year that I didn't want to make any new friends this year. That may sound weird, but I had a reason for that.  Freshman year was all about "New" (Aside from my friends from high school, shout out to Stan & Maurice). New place, new classes, new routine, new people, new friends, & new enemies (Naturally, I found my fair share of those).  It was like a challenge to see how broad and large you could grow your network. It didn't really matter how many of these connections were meaningful, it was just a part of learning the lay of the land.  I got tired of that process. 

  Why build all of these roads if I'm not going to travel down them?  Also, I thought it was lame how the old head dudes would pick off the freshman girls & swore that I wouldn't do it (I stuck to that...until my senior year, but I at least waited until the spring semester so they weren't 'fresh off of the boat' & so they could turn 18...Big whoop, wanna fight about it?)  So, I figured that I'd focus more so on the friends I had and not go out of my way to meet any new people.  This was a challenge because my roommate Stan was meeting new people everyday and always bringing them around. 

  So, after a mere month, I failed at not making any new friends, and they ended up being some of my closer friends (Shout out to Steve B, Tangerine, & Danny Phantom).  However, my approach was still to tighten existing bonds rather than create extra ones.  This paired with my previously proven polarizing personality put me in an unique position (This sentence was brought to you by the letter P).  I was known by many, but liked by less...and I was fine with that. 

  I had a conversation about this with somebody (Read: somebody not worth mentioning) and they said "You could be popular, but instead you choose to be infamous."  That statement didn't really make sense to me until recently. Initially I took it as a negative thing, like I was going out of my way to push people down stairs in order to build this reputation, but now...I see it as a positive.

  See, my personality will draw some in and push others away, that's a given.  The approach I took freshman year was to meet and be casual friends with as many people as possible. Doing that will get you known.  Following up and reaching out to most of them with casual conversations will get you popular....I chose not to do this, mainly because when I get focused on something, I'll forget to reach out to people.  Another reason why I chose not to do this was honesty. 

  My honesty is not for everyone.  My honesty may say something that might hurt your feelings.  It will not ask you how your day was if I don't want to know about it.  It will not give you a shoulder to cry on just to use the information against you later. It won't let me be disingenuous just for the sake of making you like me.  If it means that being genuine and truthful with my actions cause me to be infamous...so be it.  Because if the people I do care about know that I bring my honesty to the table every time we interact, then it'll all be worth it.