a list of bad things and some good things (not as many) about myself

I've been thinking a lot lately, because I don't have much else to do, and video games can only be so distracting, but I've been thinking that I don't know myself very well, that maybe this self-loathing partially stems from a lack of understanding. We fear the unknown, etc. I'm bad at hypotheticals, I'm bad at conjecture, I'm bad at doing anything that requires projecting myself into new and unknown places because I lack a fundamental understanding of how I behave in the here and now. I rarely stop to to consider my actions, preferring to leave it unconsidered. If I don't quantify it, it can't be measured, and yet still retains some great possibility of potential. It's not opening a letter from the university you want to go to. Potential remains unlimited, but also: disappointment.

Try this: Let's quantify some shit. I'm passive, generally content to float on the whims of others. I dislike confrontation and try to make people around me happy, or failing that, not angry at me at least. I have trouble displaying enthusiasm. I can be selfish and solipsistic (Exhibit A: this blog). I want to be perceived as smart by those around me, especially by those whose opinions I respect. I have trouble with criticism. I come off as pleasant in lieu of personable. I fear failure. I worry that I am a fraud, that I am not as smart as I think I am, that I am not as capable as I think I am. I worry that my entire self-perception of myself as a person is at any given time completely off and wrong and that said self-perception bears little resemblance to any recognizable form of reality. I am awkward in social situations. I procrastinate due to said fear of failure and find not-trying-and-not-failing preferable to trying-and-failing. I have trouble forming close friendships. I find emotional intimacy terrifying and avoid it wherever possible. I treat people who express interest in forming an emotional bond with me with skepticism. I tend to run away from relationships, and difficult things in general (opening the mail, replying to emails, initiating conversations &c.). Following from that, I am not always a great friend. I have difficulty saying positive things about myself.

For example: I am a good writer (debatable [is this self-deprecation or self-loathing?? Hard to tell]). I possess a good sense of humour, and am capable of making people laugh (while still worrying that I may have been funnier at an earlier age, that my comedy chops may have peaked at 17). I am patient, and rarely make rash, or hasty decisions (not that there is a strong correlation between time taken and quality of decision made necessarily). I try to treat all people with respect and kindness, regardless of age, sex, gender or socioeconomic status or background (but then again I do have a general need to please. Where does genuine human decency end and general obsequiousness begin?).      

Again: trouble writing positive things. Part of me feels like if I even have to write it, how true can it be? Shouldn't these facts about myself just "be"? And what if I'm wrong? What if they stem out of my wonky sense of self-perception?

And then I feel like the answer to everything above is just "ugh get over yourself." But I feel like this is important. That it happens to be in blog form is incidental. No one is reading this and yet it is the public exhibitionist aspect that makes it even possible for me to write these. It's why I stopped keeping a regular pen and paper journal. Anyway.  

Post Script: It is bothering me that it is so easy for me to ascribe ulterior, negative rationals for the positive traits I listed.  Why is it so easy to see the worst in yourself? I am not a fundamentally terrible person, yet I cannot write anything nice without ascribing some darker meaning to it. Why is that?

might be depressed, news at 11

I might be depressed. I hope I am. That would solve some problems, or at least alleviate some my non-stop self-loathing. It's not my fault, it's my faulty brain chemistry, I'll shout triumphantly. But I can't be sure. I do this sometimes, a sort of brain specific hypochondria. Like how people on the internet latch onto Asperger's as the explanation for their lack of social skills. Clinical depression would absolve me of a lot of the guilt I've been feeling lately. Is it weird to hope for depression? It's certainly a better explanation than, no, sorry your just an awful person.

Great. Now I want to be depressed. To clarify, I want someone to tell me I'm depressed. But that would require going to my doctor. And telling her about my constant feelings of inadequacy. And how the thought of leaving the house is exhausting, forget dealing with other people. I've never been great in social situations, but lately the act of interacting has become especially mentally and physically draining. Jokes seem less funny. I'm more irritable, and my tolerance for other people's shenanigans has dropped. Am I just becoming a humourless old man at the age of 23? Or is this just a phase, a dark moment that will soon pass?

The internet says I may be suffering from moderate depression! Success! There is a test for everything online.

Here's where my doubt stems from: it's a catch-22. Literally, like from the book, where Yossarian can't get out of flying missions precisely because he has the presence of mind to not want to fly missions. If I can step back and say, hey, maybe I'm depressed, how depressed can I really be? Self-awareness is a bitch. But also: I generally lack the courage of my convictions. It would take a lot for me to stand up and say definitively, I'm a guy with depression. Because what if I'm wrong and I don't? Then I'm just a whiny first (rhymes with worst)-worlder with too much time to stew in my own bubbling juices.

(Side-bar: I feel like my growing humourlessness has been a thing for good long while now, and I'm going to blame David Foster Wallace, who presented to me an example of a guy who was at times achingly sincere and poetic and beautiful and who let whatever comedy there was in his situations flow out organically. For a guy like me looking for some way to move past cheap irony and jokey-jokes in his own writing, DFW was like this shining paragon of what a sincere writer could look like in a post-ironic world. DFW was also massively talented and so my ability to synthesize some version of what DFW has come out uneven and probably tilting too heavily to one side. I seem to have come away with the idea that sincerity can be a powerful thing in an insincere world, and that humour can spring from it as well, but with no tangible idea of how to actually go about that. So that maybe I come across as over-serious, as no fun or a buzzkill. I don't want to be a buzzkill. Have I mistaken sincerity for a stale bread form of rationalism? Does that even make sense?)

Other thoughts: I say "I don't know" a lot. It prefaces most of my sentences these days. I think it started out as a false humility thing, as in, "I do know, but I don't want to seem like a know-it-all" but now it's more of a disclaimer. "What I'm about to say is of little value, please feel free to ignore/dismiss it at your leisure." Maybe it's just my way of lowering expectations, my way of making sure I don't disappoint any one. I know I've written elsewhere, probably on this blog but who knows, a defense of the phrase "I don't know." It felt radical at one time, an admission that I didn't have all the answers and that's ok too. But it's a crutch now. It's become a proclamation of total ignorance, rather than partial.

Back to sincerity. The more I think about it the more I realize I screwed up somewhere. I mistook seriousness for sincerity. And not a good seriousness (there is a time and place for itobviously) but a humourless, can't-laugh-at-himself brand of seriousness that I find kind of off putting in abstract. I used to be a lot more self-deprecating, I think. But that requires a certain level of confidence to pull off. If I were to self-deprecate now it would only come off as sad and the desperation would be palpable. Not because there is nothing inherently funny about my situation, but because I don't know how to find the comedy in my situation. I don't find my present circumstances very funny. I might one day, but somehow I don't think that will happen. (I can barely muster the conviction necessary to write that). I feel like a poor judge of what is and what is not funny. I am confidant of that much.

Self-discovery

I learned some stuff about myself in Newfoundland. Not good things, not things that make me feel good about myself, but then I haven't felt good about myself in a while so maybe this is a good thing. Self-knowledge is important.The night is darkest etc.

I have trouble getting close to people. I preemptively shut down as a defense mechanism. I am afraid of exposing myself and being hurt. I am afraid that if I allow the real me (whoever that is) to show, people will like me less, find me odd, or form an otherwise unfavourable impression of me. So I keep quiet. I am reluctant to volunteer information about myself, share anecdotes that might add a measure of characterization. I feel like if I can control the narrative sufficiently, I can shape others' perceptions of me, and trick them into thinking I'm a normal, well-adjusted human being with few-to-no hang-ups regarding the every day act of living. But I have lots of hang-ups. I am a collection of neuroses. Where others seem to be able to play these off as cute, charming, Woody Allenish tics, I worry that these will repel people. And so I remain a quiet person who eschews boat rocking. In this way I feel comfortable. People are not repelled. But then, they are also not attracted (the introvert's dilemma?).

I want to own my introversion. I want to understand it. I want to conquer it. I still have such a murky idea of who I am. I manage to achieve the dual feat of being very introverted and rarely introspective. I don't like labeling myself, for example. I used to think this was because I found labels constricting and arbitrary, but I realize it has more to do with how little I know about myself. I can't classify that which I don't understand.

This is in danger of traveling much too far up my own ass. Let's stop here.