Maybe I don’t follow the rules?

For some reason the rules are really hard for me to follow. It’s not like I don’t try, it’s just that they always come out different in my mind. I can hear the professor’s voice ringing in my hear… “Calia? Was there really a video with a skit required in my rubric in the computer science department?”…Um yes?…the teacher would reply, “okay then. I guess everyone else got it wrong then.”…The funny thing is that on most occasions, the teacher liked my way around the dry version of the material! I turned in a project for one of my master’s classes a month early one time. The teacher showed the class. It was laminated with original recorded audio chips that synced on buttons to the demographics of the social economic class that the portion of the project was talking about (duh…of course it was)…A girl in the class looked at me and jokingly said, “I’m gonna tell everyone that the singer is a geek!” …Oh. Everyone didn’t know that already? Interesting. It’s funny how we think people see us? The class laughed about the fact that they actually had to do more work on their projects than required now that the first one had been turned in and set a precedent. Well…that’s what they call me “Raising the bar Roze!” (they don’t really call me that…I completely made that up!…) oh well…They all started talking to me again after I let them use my recording studio for their projects so it all worked out in the end.

On this note though…it may be possible that since rules just naturally shape themselves around my rigid life that I so perfectly walk on the lines outside the box, that it would take a special person to walk that line with me. I always try to be the best I can be at everything I do. Some guys don’t like that and feel like they are forced to compete. The funny thing is that I guess I sort of am inadvertently competing with them as I’m trying to better myself. I can see how it might look to a guy if I always need to do everything to its fullest. Who wants someone who’s so hard to impress? The thing is that I’m not doing it for that reason. I just want to spend time with people who challenge me or have passion for what they do. I went out with a guy who refused to buy me a card- ever! …in 4 years. He broke up with me before every Valentine’s Day, and most other holidays too, depending on whether or not he liked the coat I was wearing. I had the ability to give him hand-made reversible greeting cards with musical messages in them. Where I came from, that’s just how you do it! I never expected him to be able to do that. I knew it wasn’t something he had the ability to do or even wanted to due to the fact that I’m not sure he even knew my name (come on…4 years isn’t long enough to get to know a person you know?). All I asked from him was that he go and pick out a hallmark himself and sign his name to it. He never did. One Valentine’s Day, he did show up a day later with an etch-e-sketch that he had written the words “I Love You” in. After having spent Valentine’s Day crying over our annual end of our relationship, I was shocked that he showed up with it. I looked at him, took the etch-e-sketch in my hands and asked, “Is this representing our relationship? If I bump it, it’s going to disappear?” He laughed and a year later our travel agent bumped it! ;)…She has two kids with him now.

So what do you do if you aren’t the type of person who has ever lived by the rules but hopes for what everyone else has? I think that the magic we live by is the magic that is brought out in us. I love the way I live and know that there are people who live by their own tunes also. I would think that even if their songs are completely different than mine, it is possible that they just might make harmony when played together. Maybe there are a whole set of rule breakers living on the outside edge of the box who are happier than the ones standing currently in full view. I’m certain that if I took a walk through that community, I wouldn’t have to be so hard on myself for not having what everyone else has because to them, I likely already have it all!