People watching

I love people watching. I always have.
Being a sociology major has enhanced this even more.

In high school I always loved just hopping on the train, putting in my headphones, and heading down town - I would just watch all of the fascinating people on the train and marvel about how cool humans are. I love looking at a person and trying to decide what their story is. Every person has a story and they are all so unique. Making up background stories for people and creating an idea in my head about how they ended up in that exact spot at that exact moment in their life - it seriously doesn't get much better than that.

And now that I'm a crazy social scientist, I think it's become even worse.

Not only do I love to observe people and try to figure out there lives, but now I try to figure out how they fit into a specific generalizable population. It's so interesting to see what aspects of a person fit perfectly with the description of a population and what aspects are completely different, because no one fits 100% into a defined social group, which is why social policy and research is so incredibly difficult. -- educational rant. my bad.

This kind of reminds me of the movie He's Just Not That Into You. Ever seen it? It's not one of my faves, but it was decently good. Anyway, in the movie it talks about how there are rules for dating (and for life) that are very generalizable and people try to say that they are the exception, but they are not the exception. But at some point in life, everyone is the exception. Their life doesn't fit perfectly into a little mold of how things are supposed work, and that's what makes life exciting. If everything always worked exactly like we expect it to, then life would be boring and there would be zero problems because life is predictable.
But alas... life is never predictable and people are all a little bit crazy and that is okay. This is why I study people and social groups. This is why I want to work with unstable populations and try to help them establish at least a sense of stability. This is why I am fascinated by people and will never stop people watching.

Speaking of fascinating: It has come to my attention that I am attracted to men that I find fascinating. When there is a person that I am interested in, it seems that I always end up describing him as fascinating. I love getting to know people that have different views of the world and have had different experiences and up-bringings because they widen my paradigm and give me a new way to look at the world. So... if you ever hear me say that I find someone fascinating, then you know that is the one of the best things I can possibly say about someone.