Role Models and Apologies

As I'm sure everyone present is aware, I have committed a heinous crime. I have failed to produce a post at the allotted time and for this I will have to pay the price.

I'd like to say I have as good a reason as Aoife (who maybe sorts kinda didn't deserve a punishment...?), but I don't. I just forgot. I was so happy thinking about meeting some friends of mine today that I forgot all about it. It's not like I didn't have it planned in my head or anything. Terrible business.

So anyway, my apologies to all our myriad fans, and mine in particular, who were doubtless distraught when my post failed to appear yesterday. I will try, in repentance, to make this a particularly good one.

Role Models

I don't think I've ever been terribly into role models. I've had rivalry with my sister. I've had ambition. I've wanted to achieve something because I saw someone do it and wanted to do it too. But for most of my life, I don't think I've ever looked at someone and thought "I want to be like them," not even in a small way. For most of my fairly short life people have told me I'm just grand the way I am and it's only recently, I think, that I've started to see my shortcomings clearly.

For starters, I am not a very nice person. Many people would tell you that it's not very important to be nice. I don't mean I'm not generous or giving or selfless, I like to think I can be all of those at times, I mean I am not nice. It does not come easily to me. People exasperate me, even when I feel sympathy for them, even when I am helping them at cost to myself. I am particularly unkind to my friends.
In niceness, I have a role model. My mother. She is unfailingly nice. She is a pleasant person almost all the time. Only once or twice have I seen her be anything less that extremely nice, the most recent of which was when she was gearing up for working four night shifts in a row (which she hates because she never sleeps) and she was taking me to buy school books and I made a weary sigh. She told me in no uncertain terms to cop on to myself, and she was right. She is a nurse. She spends every day helping people and enjoys it.
She is a better person than me and I try to be more like her in this regard.

I worry too much. I stress about little things, and it's not good.
In this, I have a wonderful role model. My brother is spectacularly laid back. When I say he's my role model in laid-backety, I don't mean to say I'd like to be exactly like him, more that I'd like to be more like him.  I don't think his degree of laid-backety is completely wise or helpful. Still, a bit more would probably be good for me.

I'm not sure either of these are strictly role models though.

I think, perhaps, that the idea of role models appeals particularly to children. A person to look up to, a goal to be reached, someone to whom you do not currently stand up.

Little snot that I was, full of my own importance and ability, I don't think that idea ever appealed to me particularly. I was too sure of my own worth and abilities.
And now, now that I can see my flaws, I don't think I need the goal of another person to know how I want to improve myself. I feel like the window of role models has passed for me.

By this I don't mean to say any of the other girls are childish. I think what they're talking about is an admiration for a person and a trait that that person has, but maybe not, strictly, role models in the sense I am thinking of them.

Role models have never really been a thing for me, and it doesn't look like they ever will be.

Yours in apology,
                           Orla.