Gimmie Shelter

Not sure why I feel self conscious all of a sudden, but I recently realized just how much of wet blanket my entries must make me out to be…though I’m afraid pointing this out is about as far as I’m able to care about the subject– describing the other 95% of my life, which primarily involves me tap-dance-whistling wherever I may go, whenever I may work, is beyond my interests here. I must be feeling self conscious in general, because I noticed something new– that a person can go from endeared to obnoxious real quick, and there’s a good chance they don’t even realize what’s happened. I say this because, in light of my recent feelings and behavior for a particular individual, I’ve found patterns within myself that I’ve noticed in others, in the past– others whom I may have been oblivious to the act of falling out of their high esteems and good graces. Upon realization of this, my first impulse is to go on a spree of apologies…my second is to realize how much more of the same problem that actually is, and not do that. Third impulse is to just let dead horses be dead, and focus on two narrow tasks– salvaging what little esteem I may yet have with others, and the avoidance of throwing it away in the future. How it is lost, you ask? Deliberately, often. Childish antics, and such. Other times, accidentally…but almost always they are thrown away from an unlikely bridge between eccentric expectation and reality. When expectations aren’t met, it causes anxiety. Anxiety causes obnoxiousness, and obnoxiousness forfeits respect. In this way, I fear we are often doomed to lose respect for those we have expectations for– if those expectations are not automatic attributes of the individual, regardless of our presence. So what’s the path around this? I’m going to run a two-front campaign, myself. First, I’m going to do my best to avoid falling into the expectations of others (though this is nothing new), and second, I’m going to endeavor to trust people in the only way that people can be trusted– trusting them, simply, to be themselves. Unfortunately, I’ll have to know what ‘themselves’ is, exactly, which is no small feat. We’re complicated creatures….or are we?

My mental architecture needs a bit of work. My house of a thousand open windows has degenerated into an unventilated basement with walls of flickering, static burdened TVs. Summoning the tools to complete this remodel will be the chore, and although efforts have already begun, my rustiness is already apparent. Initial conversations are stilted and off, and it takes me at least fifteen minutes to find my usual charming flow. Ideally, one’s joie de vivre should be dragging you around by the wrist, leading you through frolicking meadows…across gulches, valleys, and streams. Lately for me, it seems like I’ve been dragging it around, slung over my shoulder like desert pilgrim’s water bag. Better than losing it, but far from using it.