The amount of people that tell me I look miserable on  a daily basis is truly alarming. Since I’m not very happy-go-lucky or excitable like most of my friends or acquaintances, it is easy to assume that I’m a major downer. To give a baseline of my personality, I have been told by many people that I remind them of Wednesday Addams or April from Parks and Rec.

Some of my family members tag me in Wednesday Addams memes on Facebook that they say remind them of me. Above, is the most recent meme I was tagged in.

However, my dry sense of humor can give a bit of a skewed impression of what I’m really like. Don’t get me wrong, I am a major downer who makes a lot of negative jokes about morbid subjects that typically make people uncomfortable. But, for the most part, I just like to keep to myself and mind my own business.

Being miserable is exhausting.  As a challenge, I have decided to become more positive and friendly. This is definitely going to be very difficult, since I will have to completely alter my personality and habits. Instead of walking around and intentionally ignoring those around me, I will actually have to acknowledge the existence of others and socialize. I have collected a few items from various blogs and websites and plan to execute them throughout the next few weeks.

1. Be friendly
2. Be more sociable
3. Stop resenting people
4. Wear vivid clothing

1. In September, I was invited to a family reunion via Facebook. While I was trying to fabricate a valid excuse to dodge this event, I was notified that it was being held at my house… tragic. Having unfollowed all of these family members on Facebook months ago after their extremely heated political debates, I was dreading having to face them and be friendly while knowing what I had done. I tried my hardest to be friendly and answer all of the typical questions that families ask miserable teenagers. After explaining that I was very indecisive about my future repeatedly and being scolded for not sharing my political views, I couldn’t handle it anymore. As they were in my backyard screaming over the 2016 election, I decided to fabricate a plan to make them leave- which involved me packing up all of their leftovers and waving goodbye as I pushed them all out the door. As I shut the door behind all of the confused family members holding gigantic plates of leftovers, I realized that I was just too brutally honest and blunt to try and put on a fake persona and pretend that these people were not bothering me. Being friendly just isn’t for me.

Terrifying, I know. My grandmother took this candid photo of me last December in New York. As you can see, I am obviously thrilled to be attending the occasion and am being outwardly friendly towards those around me. I think that this photo clearly demonstrates my feelings towards every social situation and how I feel about being friendly and inviting to others.

2. I am never intentionally social. On Friday and Saturday nights, I’m that person who sits in bed under 7 blankets wearing a onesie, watching educational documentaries, and eating until late hours of the night. In fact, I have an actual collection of onesies and pay $4.99 a month for a History Channel membership so that I could watch documentaries on my mobile devices. However, with senior year being extremely busy and social, I am forced to socialize and communicate with others. Throughout the past month, between school, tutoring, work, and maintaining some sort of a social life, I have had zero alone time. Honestly, I am drained. I’m tired, hungry, overworked, and truly exhausted. I don’t think that I will ever attempt to maintain a decent social life; I am not physically capable of having one. Maybe if my life was more laid back and I used socialization as more of a leisure activity and not something mandatory , I would enjoy the company of others more. But, let’s face it- if I have been alive for eighteen years and I still try to convince people that I have a doctors appointment at eight o’clock at night and can’t hang out with them, I probably don’t have very much hope for a social life.

April Ludgate from Parks and Rec is truly my spirit animal. Similar to her, I also hate talking to people about things.

3. It’s not that I hate everyone, but I kind of do. And it’s not that I hold grudges, I just stay bitter. So, I tried to be nice to everyone that I usually cannot stand, just to see how it worked. Let me say, it didn’t. I realized that I’m just not compatible with ninety-nine percent of people, and that as much as I would like to change my tolerance for immaturity, it is impossible. I don’t really know what it is about me. Maybe it’s the fact that I was born on a Libra/Scorpio cusp, or maybe it’s because I’m an only child, and as terrible as it sounds, I just resent truly happy people. I don’t envy them- I usually just find them annoying.

4. One article told me to wear bright colors to make me look more approachable and friendly. I had every intention of doing this, until I decided that it was stupid. Why should I change my personal style just to cater to others? First of all, I don’t want to look approachable because frankly, I don’t want people to approach me. I’m terrible at talking to people, so why am I encouraging socialization when I have already proved that it’s not for me? I am going to stick to wearing my dark colors and occasional lighter shades of maroon, because that’s what I want to do.

I had intentions of doing more steps to become less negative, but I decided that I really didn’t feel like it. I got tired and decided that I was finished with this challenge. But to reflect on this experience, I learned that I really connect with the elderly, and that I’m an eternally bitter introvert who has no intentions of ever maintaining a social life. I learned that being miserable isn’t a bad thing, as long as I’m satisfied with living a life of negativity. While I performed all of these tasks to mainly become more approachable and friendly, I learned that I cannot let other people’s perceptions interrupt my personal happiness, which is actually not happiness at all and is really just negativity that pleases me.