Fellow foodies and cooking hobbyists . . . are you ever embarrassed?

penguinmama87 wrote: »

@ladyoftherocks, I can see why other posters are giving you the suggestions they are, but your OP reminded me so much of my relationship with my own parents! I'm a passionate person by nature, and I have a LOT of interests and hobbies. But to them, it's always weird that I would bother putting effort into things that they think are unimportant (basically...everything, to them, I think?) It was like that when I was a kid, too. It did make me incredibly self-conscious. But now that I haven't lived at home for a long time, and I've gotten into my own groove as an adult, knowing other families and having friends, I realized it was not actually me who was weird. There was a learning curve, to be sure - we didn't socialize much growing up and I had to learn a lot of social skills on the fly, including when to keep my trap shut even though "this is so interesting and don't you want to know about it, too?!?!"

To some extent I'll probably always be a little bit that way, and my friends are mostly willing to forgive it and I try not to monopolize. But I have learned that my parents' response is disproportionate. Maybe they just remember me as a kid and haven't been able to give that perception up. I think it's also very likely that one or both of them are depressed, just based on some other things I've seen. So, it very well may not just be you. The hard thing about that is accepting that you can't make them treat you differently. That's up to them.