I've always thought that if you trip over a crack in the sidewalk, the most sensible thing to do is break into some kind of gymnastic tap dance routine that makes it all seem like part of a larger plan.  So as an adolescent with masses of wildly curly red hair down to my waist, 6 feet tall and bony-thin in that unflattering Olive Oyl way, I made a conscious decision to make being non-baseline a personal preference instead of an affliction. It stuck. Now I think of it as public service: someone has to notice the odd things and appreciate the unusual and I've taken that on as my personal quest. I have a kind of reverse-snobbishness where anything that everyone agrees is desirable automatically drops off my radar. I intensely dislike those mall stores where everyone buys things to look just like eveyone else. I like odd things, things that don't match, things that someone has discarded, clothes that are ratty at the edges, plates that the pottery coop gives away to the thrift shop because they didn't work out at all, the wall where the paint fell off and the old wallpaper is left looking out at me from fifty years ago. I like things that are the only one like them. And I like unusual experiences, books that only a handful of people actually read, places to visit where no one goes on vacation, foods that make people unsettled. I once lived with a man with well-managed debt (which seemed on the surface just like affluence), and he would look at people with less than slick lives and say "yes, it's a lifestyle choice" as a kind of mean-spirited joke, but you know, it is a lifestyle choice for me. I choose to look for the overlooked things and to appreciate what's been shaped by life and to have a life that isn't shiny and slick. I like being nonbaseline. I think it suits me.