The Struggle To Like

I can be a rather unpleasant person, I'm sure. I have good moments and bad moments, like anyone. Sometimes I wonder which outnumber which. I often am clearheaded enough to see what a foul mood I'm in. I get very irritable, short-tempered and judgmental. At such times, I find it very difficult to write anything funny. It all comes out angry, and I have to keep trying until I can come up with something that reads like a joke.

During these times, I find that I don't like anything, or anyone. Somehow, every tweet that I read is unfunny or obtuse. Every news article is frivolous or poorly reported. I find myself saying, again and again, "What are you talking about" in a very exasperated tone. Even in more pleasant moods, I find it a difficult task to like anything. I know I can't be so superior that nothing meets my exacting standards, although something less than that could be true.

More About Myself

I get unreasonable in my dealings with other people. I am, on the whole, more sociable than I ever have been, setting aside the stretches where I hole up to recover from one physical ailment or another. That is not to say that I am so very good with people, because really I am terrible by any sensible standard. There are a whole host of issues I have, and I deal with them more successfully sometimes than others. You'l pardon me if I've said all this before, but it hasn't gone way yet.

I am momentarily seized by a fit of rage any time someone indicates that they could not hear me the first time, and I must overcome that in order to repeat myself. I just say to forget about it any time that feels possible, because I'd rather sacrifice something I thought was worth saying than to say it again. Often enough what I have to say proves unworthy anyway, so why fight to get something out there? When I think that the person will insist on hearing my words again, then I bother.

A Long Haul

Kris Kristofferson sang once that "There ain't nothing sweeter than naked emotion". There's truth in that, I think. It becomes ever rarer that people earnestly express feelings. Often they must be neutralized or made palatable somehow. We "ironically enjoy" things, or call them guilty pleasure. We malign ourselves as being nerdy or lame somehow before saying that we like something we know others don't like. It's a shame.

I am as bad with this as anyone. I distrust the release of my real emotions, fearing the impact they might have on others and the way that it all might reflect on me. I water them down, package them in a more favorable manner, or just keep them to myself. It's very, very hard to express anything like 100 percent of my feelings, outside of those that are very pleasant or that are universally shared. I am doing my best, though.

A True Brain Cloud

Sometimes I fall into these dark moods. It's hard to say what truly precipitates them. I don't know that the thing I'm aware of can really be the inciting incident. It can be something that I feel I did wrong, or a sudden feeling of loneliness, or a feeling (obviously false) of being unpopular. In such moods, my perceptions and judgments are all thrown askew. I assiduously try to be alone with sharply negative, self-maligning thoughts.

Compelled to be with people, I have to strongly guard against lashing out at them with unwarranted, unkind words. Mostly that goes all right, although it is bound to leave me very quiet, and consequently not fantastic company anyway. Actually, being with people does have a way of softening my mood, although it's not always enough to restore pleasantness. I think it's always worth forcing myself out anyway.

Do It And Learn

There's just no telling some people some things. They won't accept them- won't believe them. Very young people are apt to be like this, and moderately young people like myself are all too often (or perhaps that is just me). It is necessary to experience many things for oneself, and it is truly doing a disservice to try intervening in an effort to prevent that. I'm content now to allow people the opportunity to find things out the painful way.

I myself go through that plenty. There was the film "Sucker Punch", which I knew from many reviews was likely to be terrible. I was convinced that there must be something to it that would make it worth watching. I thought that at the very least there would be some spectacle or titillation that would justify the time invested, but there was not. I might have even been told that there was not, but I had to find out anyway.

Bristle

I have become considerably more social in recent years, but retain certain personality traits that probably do not help me in that regard. I don't like being told what to do or what to think, and while this likely does not set me apart from many, the ways in which this antipathy manifests itself may. While watching football with my father, I grew more and more upset at the gall with which the commentators told me what I thought and how I felt about the action on the field. Of course, they have come in for my criticism in the past, so there should be no surprise there.

As I said, I also don't like being told what to do, and there frequently are demands made of social networking site users. Someone will find themselves bored and just order the reader to supply them with diversions. Someone else will find some news article interesting and likewise demand thoughts or an answer to a derivative question they pose. I just don't respond well to that, especially when this is something going out to hundreds. Someone else can provide a tip on a place to eat- I'm not so hard up for validation that I've got to be the one.

It's Nice To Be Nice

I wonder how readers would describe the tone of my writing. It might be said that couched in the eloquent, formal language that has my work rated at a middle school reading level is an irascible, bad-tempered quality. This general churlishness is at odds with my desires and best intentions. I'd like nothing more than to be entirely sunshine and rainbows. The closest I come to that is when I get very silly, and often my niceness isn't expressed in words because I'm recklessly dancing at the time. Let it never be said, however, that I don't appreciate the value of being nice. It's just that like fixing cars, I don't know very well how.

Smiling a lot helps. Someone who smiles by default is a long way towards being nice. I don't really do that. Smiling comes only if called out by something rather funny. It's something to work on as a performer, I guess. I suppose I look better to others when smiling, but when I smile in a mirror, all I see are the countless lines it makes in my face. Maybe it sounds silly, but I'm as concerned about getting older as anyone, and I don't like seeing those lines. I won't be getting operated on for them, but I don't like them. Not smiling makes the lines stay away. That's not a factor in my not smiling, but it is a plus. I guess I just have to trust in the value of smiling and hope that enough things come around to provoke it in me.