Jess lanai

“One of my principles is that there is no typical anybody; every reader is different. I edit for myself and I write for myself. I assume that if I consider something interesting or funny, a certain number of other people will too. If they don’t, they have two inalienable rights—they can fire the editor and they can stop reading the writer. Meanwhile I draw on two sources of energy that I commend to anyone trying to survive in this vulnerable craft: confidence and ego. If you don’t have confidence in what you’re doing you might as well not do it.”

Quoted from ‘Writing to learn’ by William Zinsser

Zinsser is one of my favorites.

He writes as though the people reading are intelligent, questioning and functioning human beings.

He writes like he’s having a discussion and there are two sides to it.

He does not lecture people, he presents real information that can be used as people wish.

I aspire to be like William Zinsser.

He has a rare type of confidence.

The type of confidence where he believes in what he’s doing mainly because he likes what he’s doing. He trusts the core of himself and the core of other human beings.

I think people seriously underestimate how much time and effort goes into developing confidence.

You have to develop a relationship with yourself where you trust what you want more than what other people tell you to want.

That’s hard to do. You can’t force yourself to trust yourself, it’s something that gets developed by real experiences.

I didn’t start to trust myself until I could look back on an experience and know that I handled it to my benefit.

And then there are the many things that I don’t yet trust myself on. Those things create a lot of anxiety and insecurity.

What makes a man attractive?

I’ve never decided I wanted to be attracted to a man. It’s just develops or it doesn’t.

When it doesn’t develop it can be as frustrating for me as it is for the guy.

There was this one guy that adored me. He was incredibly good looking, so charming and he wanted me to date him so badly.

But I just could not be attracted to him. I tried. But it wasn’t there. Bummed me out.

Until a few years later when I found out that he beat the hell out of his fiancée.

After that I have a lot of trust in my lack of attraction.

Thinking about it now, I do believe what made me lack attraction for that wife beater is that he came off false.

Bonding with a man is very intoxicating and it has a lot to do with the man’s real feelings.

That man’s feelings were blank, I could tell they were blank no matter what he said or how he acted.

Attraction does have to do with a real bond.

Women don’t like to be taken advantage of. Or lied to. Or used to inflate an otherwise flat ego.

We do have a sense for it. A sense that maybe gets damaged now and then by too desperate a need.

But the sense is still there. We’re not attracted to falsity. Or desperate need in general, we’re attracted to men genuinely liking us.

I can even tell when a man thinks he likes me a lot but it’s just a deflated ego talking.

Confidence is a huge force behind creating attraction. But it’s not the kind of confidence people image. Where a man is suave. Or without insecurities.

It’s the William Zinsser type of confidence. The kind where he believes in himself. Not about how successful he’ll be. Just that he believes in his own good intention. He trusts himself to adapt and learn so he doesn’t try to control the environment. He trusts a core of himself enough that the world won’t be able to hijack his mind.

A good example of this is politics. Politics are very extreme these days. The man that doesn’t fall into extremes because he’s not bitter. Because he’s not trying to be accepted. Because he has a real core that’s all his own, he’s not just blowing in the wind, that’s the type of confidence that makes a man attractive.