confessions
Despite my predilection for sometimes putting my innermost thoughts on the web for public consumption, I am, at heart, an intensely private person. I continue to resist having a Facebook account, and I can only be located on MySpace by chance, unless I tell you how to find me. You won’t find me on LinkedIn, or Twitter, or other social networking sites because I’m not there. Googling my name actually finds two other people by the same name - one is a golfer in the New England area, and the other is a Londoner, who also happens to work in the IT field - neither of which are me, or related to me. Now that I’ve gotten that semi-relevant bit out of the way, let’s get on with it.
It may be that the more appropriate title for this post would be contradictions, rather than confessions. Though at times like this, this feels more confessional to me than anything else. I have to admit that lately, I’ve wanted nothing more than to spend some time around people, around friends. In me, this manifests itself in an unusual way - an almost complete withdrawal from any social situation whatsoever. Almost as if wanting to be around other people magnifies my counterbalancing and stronger tendency to want to be alone.
Over the last few months, I have discovered that the way I’ve thought and navigated life aren’t optimal for producing certain results in my life. I’ve done some things to shift that, to change the way I think, and thus the way I operate, to something that will better serve me, with varying degrees of success. For a while I made good progress, but lately I’ve been slipping back to the way I was, and I’m finding it unpleasant. Knowing I can change, and that the change is good for me, makes me acutely aware of how ineffective the old way was for me. Old habits die hard, so here I am again, trying to figure out how to pull myself out of where I am, and wondering exactly where it was I started to let things slip back.
The last day or so has been a disaster, on a personal level. Last night I skipped jujitsu class, due to being tired. This morning I was supposed to finish a first aid/cpr class, followed by another jujitsu class - I didn’t make it to either one, nor did I feel particularly guilty about it. This despite telling people at work about it, I wound up not going. I dislike telling people things and then not following through - hypocrisy is a big button pusher for me, yet I feel as if I wind up being hypocritical quite often. Makes me wonder if sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut and get on with things.
I don’t feel particularly bad at the moment, though melancholy seems to describe my typical mood. I think about things a lot, perhaps too much - thinking myself out of them instead of just doing. I went out to supper tonight by myself - though there was ballroom dancing at a local venue I went to last year. I even contacted someone I know who goes to see if she and her husband were going - they went, as far as I know, and I backed out.
If nothing else, I’ve learned this about myself - if I say I don’t know if I’ll do something, it’s a shorthand way of saying I’ll think about it, but when the time gets close, I probably won’t go. So I’m finding that when I say I don’t know, it’s really just more like no. All the rain lately hasn’t been helping. Today was the fourth straight day of rain. I find that if it rains more than a day or two, my energy decreases and my mood spirals down fairly quickly.
Maybe i just let external things influence me too much. Could be. Isn’t the first flaw I’ve seen in myself, probably won’t be the last.