flip the script
The most important way to avoid getting caught vaping on a plane is to act as if you are doing nothing wrong.
— Brangus, How To Vape On Planes Without Getting Caught
my friend xabi walks into a kwik trip and buys something, the cashier asks "would you like a receipt?" and he responds with "no thanks, i'm trying to quit." it's the ex-smoker's autoresponse in a completely irrelevant situation... the cashier takes a moment to register this and then erupts in laughter
i was talking to my friend ben l about a company that i wanted to join; i was a couple interviews in but felt like i did a poor job on the latest one. ben says "they are looking for an excuse to hire you. do something between now and your next interview where you give them that." ... total, complete phase transition from desperation to proactivity. the actions i need to take become crystal clear
(my friend max did this to get an internship in nyc: he found one of their open-source github repos, submitted a pr, and talked about it in his interview)
sometimes abandoning the usual script can go wrong. my friend matt moved to sf and within two days was texting someone about a potential date. they were going back and forth. "monday night?" "ah, sorry, that's movie night." "tuesday, then?" "can't, that's taco tuesday." so he gives up at this point and sends her a fucking calendly link, and she gets pissed and stops texting. i visited him a day after this incident and he was wildly confused about what happened
last winter i was hosting a get-together at my apartment. golden from k-pop demon hunters starts playing REALLY LOUDLY and some of my friends really want me to join in on the karaoke. i'm very hesitant because my roommate-at-the-time had brought some of his friends over and i didn't really know them? like i could physically feel their presence in the room whenever i thought about dancing. but then max handed me this stupid flashing microphone and all of a sudden i had permission to be silly
we're all actors here.
what are your lines?
do you enjoy your role?
how tightly are you holding onto it?
i think it is healthy for you to do some improv every now and then. go flip the script