“You’re weird”

A few years ago those words would have derailed me, I would have spent hours and probably days analyzing what I had done that was so weird, how it differed from what other people did and how to prevent it from happening again. For a lot of my life I spent a lot of energy trying frantically to cover up anything that made me come across as weird, different, odd, an outcast. Sometimes it felt a bit like an alien immersing itself into human society “Day 3032 and the humans have still not realized I’m an alien”.

One day, a couple of weeks ago, someone looked at me and chuckled those words out “you’re so weird”.

At first I didn’t really know how to take it, I was a bit taken aback at first, not because it bothered me, but because of the very opposite, I didn’t care at all. Instead of crawling back into my turtle shell of to analyze the hell of the situation, I just replied back and said “yeah, and?”

Weird is not a curse word, it’s not an insult and it’s most definitely not something nasty to accuse someone of, it’s something to praise someone for.

Those weird voices, the ones who think not just outside the box but inside it and around and above and below it are the ones that give us new ideas and new avenues to explore as a society. Our favourite movies, music, foods, art, books and even clothing are provided to us via the creative channels of those “weird ones”. The weird ones that block the haters and sail on through to an ocean of free thinking and creative ideas.

As we experience more ways of thinking, we are able to process more inside of our own minds and in turn we are able to produce even more original and creative interpretations.

“The Weird” doesn’t act like a block in the system, “The Weird” should BE the system, using new and creative ways to see the world should be embraced, celebrated and encouraged.

We live in such  an amazing age where we can connect with people around the world at any given time, we can share our ideas and our creative efforts as freely as we like and that’s amazing! One of the things I love about sharing my work online is that it connects me with people who also live in the same “weird” mindset that I do. I get to feel like I’m just one of the rest and at the same time I get to see incredible art and feel support for my own. Art and creativity shouldn’t be a dividing factor in how we interact with those around us, even if we don’t understand it, we should use that as an opportunity to gain insight into another person’s life and vision.

I am weird and so are you and that’s what makes things so awesome, that we’ve all got a different way of seeing and interpreting the world around us. I just wish that I had spent less time worrying about being less weird and more time coming up with ways to express it!

So go on, let your weird flag fly proudly and show the world how great it can be to see things through your eyes.