Total Mushfaker:

I am for sure a huge mushfaker. In fact, one of my favorite saying is “fake it until you make it”. Definitely words to live by! Ninety five percent of the time, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, the other five percent pretending I have a slight clue as to what’s going on. Well I’m not that clueless all the time but really who knows what to do all the time? No one! I’m kind of a slow learner, it takes me a while to actually properly learn how to do something but once I pick it up, I’m pretty great at it. In the time you spend faking it, you actually learn how to do it. Sometimes, you don’t even realize that you picked it up, it feels natural. Practice makes perfect.

            I’m the worst mushfaker when it comes to social situations. In social situations, I don’t think I can “fake it until I make it”. I’m a really awkward person and I’m really shy too (a dangerous combination). But once I get at least one friend, I instantly become way less awkward and shy. I just follow that one friend around and once they start a conversation with someone else, I casually chime in at times. Then I become friends with that person. And that’s how I make friends… being creepy and casually chiming into other people’s conservations.

            Honestly, when I’m mushfaking I feel way more nervous and shy than I really am. I feel really scared that someone could expose me for being a fake. The first time you enter a new environment, you don’t even know how to fake it. You have to do some people watching first then you adapt to their behaviors, language, and costumes. You can’t really fake your way your first day because you still need time to observe and adapt. Mushfaking is kind of like an art form, you really have master the craft of faking, some people can’t fake their way around something. You have appear like you fit in even though you know you don’t. Not only is it a state of being, it’s is a way of thinking. If you think you are something, you will soon become that. It’s like that saying, you think like a winner, you become a winner. Kind of cheesy but it’s true. Even if you lose, if you think like a winner, you’ll be a winner in your heart.

            A common new discourse environment is usually new job situations. When you go to an interview, you wouldn’t go in sweats and a sweater, there’s an unsaid protocol that you follow. You dress up as something you don’t normally dress up as. Not only are you dressing up your physical, you’re also dressing up your persona. You don’t present yourself to the interviewer the same way you would present yourself with friends or family. You’re mushfaking.  Then if you get the job, you still don’t really know what you’re doing, you’re mushfaking again. You’re kind of mushfaking your way through sometimes, at least during some big moments in your life.