Day 49: All the Hidden Things We Do that Annoy the Piss Out of People

I wrote in my poem, All the Things, that the irony of life is that the only person you cannot truly look at is yourself. What I meant is that without mirrors or photos we cannot see ourselves; those are just images, artificial copies. Additionally, we are terrible at knowing how we are perceived to the other people in our life.

Unless we are told that something is annoying, beyond the normal social norms, we have no idea that our laugh sounds ridiculous, or our weird smile, or how we point out flaws, or how we always interrupt, or how before we say anything we say “um”, or how we are over unrealistically happy, or how we smack our lips too much, or are just plain mean to other people without realizing it. The list goes on and on and it is different for everyone.

It takes a lot of brain work and observation to be able to see your own flaws without someone pointing them out. Just take a moment and think about the people in your life. How many of them have at least one thing they do that annoys the piss out of you? A few? The majority? It is a fun psychological conversation. Of course, as nice people, we don’t want to point out something that is truly harmless and risk hurting someone’s feelings. So, we remain silent and then giggle about the people we love behind their backs.

Even with the constant scrutiny of myself, I will never be able to catch all the little things that I do that my family and friends know all too well. Once you realize that, it takes a lot of self-confidence to just be yourself.

But being conscious of your words and actions is a good thing. We can all try our best to be friendly, but we will inevitably annoy or piss someone off just by being ourselves.

Here is a list of things that I do or attributes that I think annoy people:

- My red hair

- Changing a conversation into an argument by playing the devil’s advocate for the other side

- Burps & farts

- Just my face

- Not listening well

- Not asking for help

- Starting something and not finishing it

- Telling my parents that I don’t want anything for Christmas

- Not acknowledging texts in group messages

- Coming off like a know-it-all

- Telling boring stories

- Reaching for compliments

- Overstepping boundaries with authority figures

Some of these things could be true and some could just be my self-consciousness. Either way, I will never be 100% correct and neither will anyone else.

The point is that we all still have friends and family that invite us to events, still laugh at our dumb jokes, and still find it enjoyable to be around us despite our flaws. It is probably better that we are in the dark about most of our little quirks because then we would over analyze ourselves, which would become another flaw. So, let’s all just be ourselves and say fuck it. The ones that matter will stick with us.

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Author's Note #1: The things that bother us about other people tend to be qualities in ourselves that we don't like.

Author's Note #2: Sober qualities and drunk qualities are two different categories of personality.