[Jmet]

Its a long story, but here i what I wrote about changing myself, any other suggestions to fix my flaws. That night I wrote this.

Open-letter: What it is like to have a personality such as Will McAvoy and Don Keefer?

Well the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I have a personality such as that of Will McAvoy and Don Keefer from the ‘The Newsroom’. It honestly sucks, I think it has somewhat brought out the worst in me, and now due to it as Will put it, “I’m not smug, I’m just having a crisis of confidence.”I can say that it is generally one of my pitfalls, and there are aspects about it that I tell people to inform me when I become uncouth but it seems they never even tell me. I never thought that I would be penning this open letter, but the past few hours events have made me decide to write this. The best way to aptly put into a scene what my mood is right now just think of Will on his balcony smoking listening to “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison.


Usually, something like never really affects me as I just shrug off, but since the perfect calamities have happened over the past 18 hours it really affected me. I really won’t go into specifics here but just thinking on the matter of what has happened, just think of as when Mac sent the email to everyone and Will walks into the newsroom, but just reverse the role. And actually in retrospect, It’s just make me feel like I am Will Mcavoy on his balcony, the night he is told that he should take time off from ACN and not be part of the 9/11 broadcast. Now months ago, I did the BuddyTV quiz and the first time I got right off the bat Will but the second time, I got Don. My friends that know me, some told me that I am like Will and some say a mix of Will and Don (usually 75%/25%).

We all remember how Will is and unfortunately I have many of those traits. Let’s breakdown the personality traits of Will from the BuddyTV results. BuddyTV listed for Will the following: “You are a talented person with the potential to establish a huge name for yourself. You Understand the key to success is pleasing the people around you and not getting on anyone’s nerves You are blunt and honest, which sometimes gets you in trouble but your heart is in the right place and your friends stand behind you.” Number One: “You are a talented person with the potential to establish a huge name for yourself.” Check. Number Two “You understand the key to success is pleasing the people around you and not getting on anyone’s nerves” Check. Number Three: “You are blunt and honest, which sometimes gets you in trouble” Check that off, and finally Number Four “but your heart is in the right place and your friends stand behind you.” Well add a final check mark there.

Now lets look at Don’s personality result from the BuddyTV personality quiz. For Don, it states, “You have a great understanding of the world and how things work. While you are smart, your attitude puts your job at risk. You often side with the majority, always wanting to be on the safe side. You don’t get along with people who are a lot like you. You are also reluctant to commit when it comes to relationships.” Now let’s break it down into my personality. Number One: “You have a great understanding of the world and how things work.” Check. Number Two: “While you are smart, your attitude puts your job at risk.” Check. Number Three: “You often side with the majority, always wanting to be on the safe side.” So-So. Number Four: “You don’t get along with people who are a lot like you.” Negative, and finally Number 5: “You are also reluctant to commit when it comes to relationships.” Lets check that off aswell.

As you can now see, I fit in to Don and Will’s personalities and we know how they act. Now hopefully you can see where I am somewhat coming from for this open letter. Now as we all know near the end of season 1, Sloan told Don “I don’t know who told you you’re a bad guy, but somebody did, somebody along the way. Somebody or something convinced you of it because you think you’re a bad guy, and you’re just not. I’m socially inept, but even I know that. So because you’re a bad guy you try to do things you think a good guy would do, like committing to someone you like but maybe don’t love. A sweet, smart, wholesome Midwestern girl. I could be wrong. I almost always am.” Well, I am partly in Don’s boat there, just by sheer fact. In what has transpired that caused my crisis of confidence, I was told basically along the lines that I am a bad guy, for basically asking the question “Why have I not heard from you, in an extended duration.” because I did not hear from my friend in 14 days. I guess you found the existence of what Sloan said and the reason why. This person where what happened transpired, you can say in sorts is like Maggie, but she is actually more like Sloan. So, I guess she finally made it to the rage phase in any sense of the word. Now I will say that I could of acted a bit more professional, but at that time I was terse and that sadly affected what transpired.

Overall at the end, I was basically asked the same question that Will was asked by Mac which mine was different but was somewhat like Mac saying to Will “ Mac: Are you in or are you out? Will: I have to give you credit for thinking you can chew me out - on this particular—Mac: I’ll chew you out on any particular day. “— want to know the cause of it? Caring for a friend. I will say that on my playlist is “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt, which basically sums up my mood about this: “I really feel that I’m losing my best friend. I can’t believe this could be the end. It looks as though you’re letting go and if it’s real, Well I don’t want to know.”

To my friend, I’m in. I am acutely aware one cannot rebuild their friendship amongst its ruins so for the sake of my friendship and trying to fix what I can and to not have the same indignities and deceits that’s transpired. In order to try to fix what has happened, I must “strike another match, go start anew” and try to fix my personality flaws. It might not be overnight, but at the very least I have a blueprint to work upon. To my friend, just remember that I will be infinitely learning from this following quote “Learn from yesterday. Live for today. Hope for tomorrow.” And by John Wooden “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”

Continuing on, because of the personality traits of Will and Don, at times makes it so people don’t want to tell me what is going on, but then they want to know why I get terse when I find out last minute. They honestly at times expect me to read their minds and I can’t and again when I have something planned and I have to cancel it at the last minute it realty gets annoying. At times I feel like Will find out that Mac is hired with out his knowledge. It really makes me feel like basically saying depending on the situation that I really need to say, “I’m never going on vacation again.”

One of the other things people have told me in the past few days is that I am a very pretentious person, but that is honestly not the case by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, depending on what’s going on and people go and look at me, they may not see an expression, but maybe that I could be digesting the information. I will say that at a young age, my family was featured in the media for my father’s funeral as he was a fallen firefighter. Due to that, I can say my life is really private, with hardly anyone knowing the full story but for that I have to honestly say (and I will grab from Jimmy Buffett for it) ”I never wanted to be a man of mystery”. I have some pretentious traits, one of them that I use big words, but I can grasp the meaning of it because if I don’t know it, I will look it up. Due to that character flaw of being able to comprehend and use big words, I honestly think that people are under the impression that I’m an jerk as mac asked “are people here under the impression that Will is an ***?” I have to agree with Mac’s response to when she asked people if they are under the impression about Will where in both of our cases as Mac put it ” you’re wrong. You know? You’re just wrong and it’s an injustice.” To the people know me, most of them know that I would throw myself in front of a train for them. Overall for that, when I try to explain I get shot down because my rebuttal might be a tad to terse but I am an old truth teller, and I can quote the following from the Jimmy Buffett song “Just an old truth teller” which is the following “I’m not some daydream seller, I do not pretend”…” That’s labeled me crossed and uncouth, but I can’t help it I just tell the truth” and I can quote Will here from the episode bullies “I’m tired of people telling me it’s a “just get over it” situation.”… “You don’t know what it’s like in my head.”

Furthermore, I was reading a post from -link- entitled “”You don’t know what it’s like in my head” (The Newsroom)” and I am Will. They put in their post “Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom is a misfit with his fair share of gumption. Things do not affect him the way they would the average person. Nor does he cope with things the way the average person would.” Lets break that down, according to the free dictionary, a misfit is someone who is “not suited in behaviour or attitude to a particular social environment.” Give that one a great big green checkmark. Secondly according to that post he has “his fair share of gumption”. If we look up the definition for Gumption, according to the Oxford dictionary it means “Shrewd or spirited initiative and resourcefulness” we can place a checkmark there. They finish off the post there with “Things do not affect him the way they would the average person. Nor does he cope with things the way the average person would.” My reply the last sentence is that you’ve read me like a map. So if you look at it, I am will from that stand point as well.

Now that I’ve digressed and given a lot of background information about my psyche, you can see how I can relate myself to both Will and Don. I do have a personality such as that of Will McAvoy and Don Keefer from the ‘The Newsroom’ and again It honestly sucks. Overall, as Will put it within the first 8 minutes of the pilot “First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.” I know that my crisis of confidence will continue while I do soul searching and find out how to change my character flaws, which mind you can only be fixed one at a time. I thank you for taking your time to read this. I will leave you with this.

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” ― Ernest Hemingway

To Those I’ve hurt: Adults should hold themselves accountable for failure. And so I’m holding myself accountable for failure and I apologize for everything I’ve done. Change won’t happen immediately or overnight, but just remember I am changing myself for the better and that I’ll be always trying to be the best me, I can be. Please note, that even though it’s a long enduring process, it will be for the good for all and I think that it will really help the our interpersonal relationships between myself and whom I have affected. Just also note that I must “strike another match, go start anew” by embracing the change.

[bluekoi]

Jmet, Change takes time. It is a hard journey, but you will (and others around you) will reap the benefits. We are here to support you!

[ChipperMonkey]

I think you'd get a lot more feedback if you spoke solely about yourself rather than making the whole post a comparison to characters that not everybody knows about. I honestly couldn't follow the post very well at all, and I have a feeling that others are going to find it obscure as well. Talk about just yourself, as you are unique, not the same as any other character, even if you identify with them.