A semi-sane personal blog post about developing crushes and why they are both the best and worst things that can happen to you. Now, if you're not a blog-reading type of person, here's the tl;dr—having a crush on someone is the worst because it makes you actually have to care. But it can also be one of the best things because now you actually care.

That might not be a very clear explanation. But before I get too deep into the subject, a little background knowledge to let you know a bit more about my experience with stuff like this. It doesn't take me much for me to develop a crush; honestly, I'm the type of person who will fall hard for anyone if they happen to do anything nice for me. That type of thing, I would call it just a "casual crush". You know, the kinds you wuickly develop on that guy who held the door open for you at the mall, or on the really sweet Disneyland employee who knew a funny joke. While they're fun to have, that's not really the most affecting of crush types. And it's not what this blog post is supposed to be about.  

Bear with me, I'm about to go all personal-blogger on you. Haha, sorry. But anyway, if you've followed me for a while, you'll know that one of my most serious crushes was on a guy in my high school named Luke, whose locker was near mine and was in my advanced art class. The thing about ome casual crushes is that they make you develop, over several instances, a serious crush, and that's what happened with Luke. It was just instance over instance of one cute thing and then another until eventually, I got to know him a lot better and my casual crush became pregnant with a serious crush, and there were complications with that. This section of the post is just to help me sort of examine myself and my psyche. In retrospect, I remember feeling very, very awkward with crushes. For starters, now I actually had to think about how I looked and how I acted around him, what sorts of things I said or didn't say. I was rehearsing conversations to have with him in my head, imagining myself cool and confident, and then totally flopping on delivery because I forgot what I had rehearsed. It was an awkward time for me, but when I look back I think about all the progress I made because of my crush on Luke. I was more motivated to stay active and keep a healthy physique, I was more aware of my own words, more attentive to the needs of other people, I wanted to know more things so that I could talk to him about more topics, and thus I widened my gaze and learned more about other subjects. In a way, developing that embarrassing crush on my classmate helped me grow as a person even if my feelings weren't reciprocated (actually, he did confess to me, but by that time, my crush-feels were dwindling. Plus he moved out of state).  It was like forming that humiliating crush helped me realize just how much I was starting to slip into apathy and made me realize that there was still so much that needed my attention: like my health, my relationships with other people, my education, etc. Lots of people like to look down on young girls who develop "childish crushes", but as I look back, I think it's actually an okay thing for a girl to have; it's a part of growing up and learning how you relate to other people as well as yourself.

Why blog about this, you ask? You guessed it: I've got a new serious crush. And it's even more embarrassing given how old I am (technically, I'm only like 20, but lol I shouldn't be this susceptible to crushes by my age). I wanted to write this blog post beccause I think my feelings are starting to peak, and I need to tell someone about it and I can't tell my friends yet. I used to rant to my friends about him, talking about how antisocial and stoic he is and how he kept bossing me around at work, making me do everything, and I pretty much tried to make it clear to them that I did not like him at all. But soon enough, my friends started noticing how much I ranted about him and one of them brought up how I couldn't seem to stop talking about him. At first, I brushed it off and was very admant that I hated him. But lately, I've started to notice myself caring again; just like in high school, I'm being health-conscious, I'm exercising more, I'm reading more books about subjects I wouldn't be interested in, I'm rehearsing coversations again, I'm talking to more and more people, I'm being hyper-aware of my words and my actions. I'm nervous to walk into my job and see him. I keep checking my schedule trying to see when I have shifts with him. Heck, I'm feeling even more urgent about writing again.

It's happening again. 

Why do my crush-developments always coincide with an urge for mental, physical, and spiritual self-improvement? I mean, I know I should be motivating myself and working on self-empowerment and not trying to impress other people, but part of self-empowerment also involves letting yourself feel whatever you feel. The funny thing about Seth is that he is not even my type at all, and he's not good-looking by any standards. In fact, my friend called him ugly lol. I used to think he was so stuck-up and self-centered, and despite how long we've been working at the same place, he almost never spoke to me except to boss me around. But little by little he started... doing stuff for me, like being really patient with showing me where things are on the cash register or offering to stay an hour or two overtime so I could go home early. The first thing I can remember is when I got in trouble with our boss for one reason or another, and Seth wasn't even anywhere near, but out of nowhere, he appeared just as the boss was giving me a stern talking-to and was like "Oh yeah, that's not her fault, I forgot to tell her about that, that's my bad." Another time was when I was with a customer and they were asking me about different shades of paint and the different between one kind and another and I remember they asked me a question that I couldn't answer and I kind of froze because I didn't know what to say. Seth was walking by so I was like "Psst! I have a question!" and he kinda laughed at me because I was clueless but he came over anyway and answered their questions. At this point, I could tell the customers would rather have had him showing them the paint and not me. So I was going to excuse myself and go back to the station, but then Seth was like "Oh you know what, Em here can tell you guys all about it and she'll help you out at the station, she's wonderful", so he took us all back to the station, meanwhile trying to tell me what to do and how to help them. Later, the customers were super satisfied with my service, and I felt good about being useful to them. Later that day, I ranted to my friends about how he made me do everything and even threw me under the bus by being like "Oh, yeah, Em will take care of it for you". But in actuality, I... I actually liked helping those people, and Seth's advice was really valuable.

Don't get me wrong, he's still a pain in the sometimes, and he still thinks he can tell me what to do since he's a senior co-worker, and lots of times, he still keeps up the silent act even when we're barely standing like two feet away from each other and my goodness, he can be so awkward sometimes. But I don't know. Something about him. Maybe I'm just overthinking things or maybe I'm just getting too caught up in him swooping in and saving me from customer service disasters with his senior-co-worker wisdom. But while it lasts, I'm going to enjoy this random burst of an overwhleming desire to make myself a better person.

p.s. what is up with this new layout? imo, don't change the layout unless you're going to improve upon the last one, but so far I haven't seen improvements? plus I hate the new font