This Post Has Nothing to do with Demi Lovato

How would you rate your confidence level?

[Trying this daily prompt feature out because I’m in a weird mood and I feel like writing something but I’m not in the mood for a “real post”]

The answer to “What’s My Confidence Level” really depends on what specifically we’re talking about.

1) Self Confidence

This is a loaded question (and I have written far too many words in various mental states about this already). I’ll summarize: If we’re talking about any of the following mostly useless skills, such as

• Ability to speak bad French with an accent that does not sound American
• Sing “Before He Cheats” – I don’t even like the song that much, but I can sing it at karaoke to drunk people with low expectations
• Convince people I’m good at doing my job (my face is nothing special, but I’ve got a good-looking resume) – ok, this skill is arguably useful…
• Flirt – despite my not-good-looking face and body, I’m surprisingly good at flirting. I can’t make you love me if you don’t, but I can make a person I fancy talk to me and want to talk to me again without taking all my clothes off (which would actually be detrimental to the cause because I look bad naked)
• Survive making a fool out of myself at karaoke – ok, I suppose survival is a useful life skill…

then yes, I’d say I feel rather confident about my abilities in any of the above-mentioned.

If you need a bad French speaker, a shepherd’s pie recipe (the one recipe I actually can cook), or someone to flirt with your boyfriend, I’m your girl. Photo by Vanessa Garcia : https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-man-doing-thumbs-up-hand-gesture-6326026/

But if we’re talking about things not on that above-mentioned list, or about anything when I am in a particularly depressed state, then my self-confidence is really low.

Self-portrait of my self-confidence re: most things not on that above-mentioned list. Image by John Hain from Pixabay

But also, the whole rating-one’s-abilities-at-various-things feels like a strange exercise at times. For pretty much all things, statistically speaking, we all will be ok – neither the very best nor the very worst. Everyone is suspended somewhere in the middle.

2) Investor / Economic Outlook Confidence

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Even if the economic outlook were fantastic, no one had even heard of the words “layoffs”, “inflation”, or “eggs cost $8 now, WTF”, I am the biggest pessimist ever. I’m not a glass-is-half-empty pessimist, I’m a there’s-no-happy-outcome-for-this-glass-anyway pessimist. You can’t be much of an investor if you don’t believe anything will go up. And that’s my mindset when the economy is good.

I’m a “the glass is pointless” pessimist during a bull market too. “A Bull Market” by cowlet is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Granted, an investor could still be theoretically confident even in a bad economy. 2023 was the year everyone said that the housing market finally would crash and that we’d be able to take advantage of everyone else’s misfortune and finally buy a house and get out of here. Setting aside the tastelessness of that sentiment, it assumed that,

1. We wouldn’t also get laid off (my job hasn’t announced layoffs, but Husband’s has, and my sexy good-looking resume aside, my husband is the primary breadwinner. Yup, I’m basically a stereotype.)
2. It assumed that the market was the only reason we hadn’t been able to buy a house. LOL- nope!

Side Note #1 (Important):

Despite my penchant for giving advice when I’m unqualified to do so, do not make investment, financial, medical, halachic, or any other important decisions based on this blog. If you do this, Jewish Young Professional assumes zero responsibility for your stupidity – any consequences you face are your own damn fault.

Side Note #2 (Not Important):

I started listening to “Confident” by Demi Lovato because it seemed to fit the mood and inspired the title of this post. [I’m not a huge fan of Demi Lovato as a person because she/they? (is Lovato self-identifying as a woman these days? I can’t recall) strikes me as an obnoxious attention-seeker, but I find some of Lovato’s music catchy and I thought Lovato was good in Glee and in the Fire Saga Eurovision movie on Netflix]).

Anyway, I hadn’t realized that the lyrics of Confident were so sexual. I’m mean, I don’t really care (have you read this blog?); it’s more that I just never paid attention to the lyrics. Meanwhile, I was convinced that “Unstoppable” by Sia was a sex song because of that line about “I don’t need batteries to play” but I just listened to it again and the lyrics are actually not sexual. I mean, I have a pretty inappropriate mind and even I can’t really pervert “Unstoppable” except for that batteries line.

I suppose bottom line, I am not confident in my ability to remember song lyrics. Then again, I do karaoke (where they put the lyrics on a screen for you) and write parody song lyrics, so perhaps this is not a massive personal failing.