These things hurt. Like, no joke- they hurt a lot at first, to the point where I leaked a few tears and kept resisting the urge to unhook them and just sleep.

I’m talking about the rubber bands that go on your braces, not the rubber bands that you use to tie things together, or the rubber bands that you would use to make a slingshot- although a slingshot would also hurt a lot, frankly.

But yeah. I was just thinking about that because currently my rubber bands aren’t cooperating at all. I think the orthodontist gave me a version too thick, because it’s not properly hooking itself onto my braces, and the ends keep ripping and completely destroying all the latex bands I own because the hook is too sharp. It’s only on my right side though- the one on the left is alright.

It’s weird to me because I’m a righty. I don’t know if that makes any sense for why it’s weird, but I’ve discovered from this minor inconvenience that I expect basically everything on my right to work out perfectly.

This is true in everything else I do as well- I play piano, and focus on my right (although that is partially the fault of the composers for writing the main parts for the right hand) and get super frustrated when it doesn’t work out. I play uke, and I expect my strumming to follow through perfectly, and when it doesn’t I keep strumming and singing until my nails hurt and until I can actually play it the way I want to.

It’s a weird thing. You know, over the summer, I tried to train myself to be ambidextrous. It worked out alright, in my opinion- I can use any utensil with my left as well as my right, like chopsticks and knives, but I still can’t write fluently with my left hand. That’s mainly because I didn’t have the time to endlessly write the alphabet over and over with my left hand, like my right hand has surely experienced in its past thirteen years of life, but also just because I didn’t see the worth of it.

I wonder if I missed out on anything. Maybe instead of just having high expectations for my right hand, I could be having equally high expectations for my left hand.

The question is: would that help? Would being endlessly worried and expectant of my hands to work help me do things better?

I think it would, just referencing my experience with having anxiety over my right hand’s performance. Just the other day I was taking notes for Global, about Persia and Greece, and one of my “a”s looked too square, so then for the rest of the notetaking I was making sure that all my “a”s were perfectly round and carefully drawn out. I took notes, and then eventually I was done- I finished doing five pages of notes without getting distracted because I had a goal in mind, which was to make the “a”s look better.

I feel like I discovered this tactic a long time ago- making things easier to do by setting a goal. They always tell you in elementary school to set goals, and you get handed these pretty little worksheets with happy faces and lists written in Amatic SC font, saying “Goals for silent reading time!” that you have to fill out. It’s weird, because for me personally, I didn’t pick up the sheer value and importance of motivation from that until the end of seventh grade.

It’s just another example of how important teaching is, I think- it’s not like the teachers knew that I didn’t realize the essence of goals and motivations, so I don’t blame them for not kickstarting my work ethic from when I was ten, but if that one mistake messed with me doing work for another three years then it’s a wonder how many other things I don’t realize.

messing children up is so, so easy. that’s why i genuinely fear becoming a parent, ever, because so many things i do aren’t healthy and to imagine that passed down to another human being with fifty+ years of life is terrifying.

just another reason to improve myself, i suppose.