Pushing My Own Buttons: Am I Good at Anything?
Do I like myself? Yes. I make myself laugh, and I think I’m pretty smart. What am I good for? Not a damn thing. I can’t cook, I’m not a morning person, I proudly have not been on a run in four years, and I can’t even fucking DJ. I’m also sooo dramatic, considering I am obviously good for plenty (breaking awkward silences, scrabble), and I have a pretty good self-image.
I’ve always thought of myself as someone comfortable outside her comfort zone. After being described as “comfortable” for the millionth time, I’ve realized that I might just have a huge comfort zone that provides plenty of entertainment from within– and no matter how large it is, I cannot bring myself to exit. My aversion toward learning new skills has exemplified this.
I’ve always daydreamed about being great at sewing or fluent in French, and I even had dreams where I’m a basketball legend or really good at snowboarding. Other than the snowboarding thing, obviously, I could begin practicing these skills any day now to master them. But that just doesn’t sit right with me. The whole applying myself concept. I talk about achievable aspirations and have never considered a plan to execute them because I’ve never had a true intention to do so. So, this past week, I challenged myself to learn something new that I had envisioned for myself for months. With a practically born stage name and naturally great stage presence (on the stage of life, of course), I decided I needed to take the first step in learning to DJ.
I despise myself for applying something I learned in an online course to my real life, let alone a management simulation I guessed on, but with SMART goals in mind, I gave myself a time constraint of one week. I figured 30 minutes a day was appropriate. At the time of writing, I realized a huge flaw in this experiment was that it wasn’t measurable nor relevant, which is probably why I started feeling like I was good for nothing/useless/bad at everything every two days. I didn’t really have an end goal beyond being able to mix at a pregame to the point where my friends would tell me I was at least “pretty good.”
To preface the preface, I prefer phrasing from an optimistic point of view. With that being said, I am very good at not admitting when I am wrong. I am working on weakening this strength. This quality goes hand in hand with my revulsive reluctance toward things I am not very good at. This past week demonstrated how much I detest my weaknesses and skills I do not automatically pick up effortlessly.
Image Courtesy: Juju Paymaymesh
Day 1
As I’ve explained, there are a lot of mental roadblocks in the way of me and my goals. Now, imagine taking these on as I am the world’s most hungover person ever on Day 1. After accompanying him to the Taco Bell drive-thru for my first trip outside the house at 3 p.m., I went to my friend Jacob’s place to borrow his board for the week. We said it would be best to discuss some “basics,” but that barely helped because I still had no idea which cords needed to be plugged in and where. He was saying things about the board, and I was there physically, but mentally I was already defeated. My face tends to get super red when I concentrate. I left flustered with a bag of cables, a DDJ-200, a beat red face and a dream. I figured that was enough work for the day.
Day 2
Like anyone else, I could have contacted their friendly neighborhood DJ for a demo, but I wanted to see if I could do this on my own. I convinced my friend Noelle that this was an experiment that now involved her, as she and I, at one point, shared an aspiration to combine forces and become a DJ act. Noelle, too, chooses to focus on the optimistic side of things. I love that about her! I could tell she tried to keep a smile but occasionally would expose her teeth after a few minutes of unpleasant noises. She told me I had “so much opportunity for improvement” (damn), gave me two pats on the shoulder and walked out. I was a fool with a DJ’s computer software.
Day 3
Lord, today drained me. I woke up pissed that I hadn’t become a mixing god yet. I had already decided at this point that I was an actual failure for not having the magic touch right from the jump, so I had zero motivation besides this article to put in the work and give it a try. I watched a two-minute Rekordbox tutorial video highlighting the board's layout but nothing about the mixing part. I felt inspired and looked up a beginner’s tutorial on YouTube. The top three videos were 20+ minutes long, which immediately felt like too much effort. To be fair, I can’t even watch TV shows with multiple seasons because I lose attention too quickly. I looked up songs with the same BPM and did a little FTCU X Money Trees moment, but it took zero work, and I felt like I was cheating.
Day 4
A mixing tutorial magically lands on my for you page on TikTok. Okayyy, data collection. How did you know I am actively learning to DJ!? I replicated the exact mix with the two songs the creator used. It didn’t sound awful, but not great. Obviously, I called my roommate Sofie into our room, and she thought it was a lot better than I did, but I realized it was because she thought I was mixing parts of the song that were already in there. But confidence is key! If she thought I could do that, then maybe I could? But then I thought maybe I could tomorrow, so I left to play pickleball.
Day 5
In short, I didn’t do shit. Wasn’t feeling it. Even worse is that my friends wanted me to play for them. Absolutely not. I wasn’t ready to show them that I wasn't a naturally gifted sound engineer. I realized this wasn’t making me feel so good about myself. So, I self-tanned because that always boosts my confidence in myself.
Day 6
Oh baby, this is where the tides turn. This day had me feeling like I was the shit. Good things happen to girls with a tan and I’ve always said that. I had nothing to do that day, so it had me thinking how awful this damn article is going to be. I bossed up and practiced for two hours, which included watching a 36-minute video teaching the basics. Who knew to be good at something, you had to try (hate that)? I went into this experiment hoping I would end up able to literally put out a SoundCloud original for reasons I don’t know. What I can say is I got the basics of transitions down pretty well. I even threw a couple of loops in there, so yeah, I knew what I was doing. I also want to point out that DJs ARE CHEATING (kidding, but not really) when they play live because they can put in their little cues to each song beforehand, which feels unfair. Anyway, I was able to transition through 5 songs and instantly felt like the song Turn My Swag On.
I enjoyed this experience, but I noticed that I hate picking up new hobbies because I hate the idea of being bad at anything. It has nothing to do with my pride, solely the fact that I am a spiteful bitch and an unwavering insistence on always being right. But what I have realized is that now that I have passed the hump of being extremely awful, I look forward to continuing my pursuits. This is not an inspirational piece about persistence or setting your pride to the side to broaden your horizons. This was more of a scientific study on humility if my curiosity supersedes my embarrassment.
I want to apologize to every DJ I have bitched at when they said they didn’t have my requested song downloaded. To my friends at House Hats, I have more respect than ever for you. You’re right up there with people running marathons for fun and doing cold plunges. I cannot sit here and act like I am now motivated to learn more and overcome my fear of inadequacy. I can say that I learned more about myself, and for now, I will stick to my own tempo (god so corny).
Strike out,
Writer: Juju Paymayesh
Editor: Denisa Fluturas
Gainesville
Known only by the government and her older sister as Juliette, Juju Paymayesh is a writer for Strike Magazine Gainesville. Most of her time is spent rewatching Men in Black lll (the greatest film of our time), obsessing over all shades of the color blue or living in fear of what her Spotify Wrapped playlist may look like this coming December. Forward all inquiries and memes to @JujuPaymay and all Venmos to @JujuPayMe.
