Shit, I have a goddamned motherfucker of a swearing problem.

Anyhow, I cleared up the issue of why I couldn’t register. As it turns out, I need to place a $250 deposit down each semester, and they haven’t gotten mine yet.

I assume everyone has to do that, although given how long it took me to pay them for last semester, I wouldn’t blame them for not trusting me so much.

And that’s not a problem. It just means I will have to tell Tila that she won’t be getting her $400 back any time soon. Back when I thought everything was settled, I told her I would mail her a check.

Which seems silly. There has to be a less archaic way of doing it than snailmail and checks!

Anyhow, I will need that $, so, no returning it just yet. I will use it to pay this deposit. Luckily, doing that doesn’t involve any insane and seemingly arbitrary administrative delays, so I should have the problem fixed fairly soon.

I am sure Tila will understand.

The only reason it isn’t already solved is that right now, the money is in financial limbo. It has definitely left my checking account, but it hasn’t arrived on the credit card yet.

That makes me nervous. I will be calmer when the money finally lands, and I can use the credit card to pay my deposit like I did the last time.

Every step of this process has been met with unpredictable delays. I would love to be able to say I have gotten used to it now. But to be honest, it’s beginning to fray my nervous.

Then again, I have a liter of Diet Coke in me, so it might be that. Too.

Oh, and get this : if I want to see if it landed yet, I have to use the stupid phone because the website for my credit card is down and has been down all day. It’s insane. I mean, what the fuck is going on? It’s been down since 2 pm and I am writing this at 7 pm, so that’s 5 hours of nobody able to do their credit card business for all this time.

And it’s the middle of the week, and the problem started in the middle of the day. So it’s not like everyone is asleep or off for the weekend. There is just no excuse for that kind of sloppiness.

Doesn’t exactly fill me with faith in the institution. And I bet it’s something stupid too, like the one guy who knows how these things work is sick, or has to stay home because some pointy headed pencil pusher declared there would be no more overtime period, or somesuch.

So when I want to see if I can pay the deposit, I have to call the number and enter my credit card number and so all over again.

When you are as spoiled by the Internet as I am, dealing with a phone tree like that is maddening. I mean, I don’t even remember my passwords any more. Why would I? My browser does it for me! Like a Cracked writer recently wrote, it only takes one piece of technology to fail before you realize we’ve become the Eloi and any day the Morlocks are gonna eat us.

Anyhow, as soon as my money exits the Phantom Zone and returns to Earth, I will pay up, and then finally be able to register for classes.

Oh, plus I have to do that final project for Psych 1200. Then I have two exams.

Maybe after THAT I will finally be able to completely relax. Sheesh.

Otherwise, life is sliding along. Having to deal with the whole deposit issue at least gave me something purposeful to focus on. Plus I am getting laundry done, including bedding.

Supervillian : I am your master, and you WILL do my bedding!

Otherwise, though, despite my earlier resolution, I have slipped back into my stupid old lifestyle of life just being something to endure in between times with actual content, like meals. Just me bobbing back and forth between lying in bed playing games on my tablet and me sitting here on this office chair, burning brain cells by hanging out on Facebook, sampling its multifarious temptations.

Ain’t no cure for Cracked lists.

And that’s not exactly nothing. But it’s not exactly something either. Just passing time stimulating my outsized brain in pointless activity between meals and naps.

Thank God there is always this blog to keep me at least somewhat stitched together. As long as I have my thousand words a day to do after dinner, my life has some kind of purpose.

I was talking to a friend recently about depression making it feel like there is no point to doing anything because the anhedonia has gotten so severe that not only are you not taking pleasure in the things that normally make you happy, it’s hard to even imagine enjoying anything at all.

My friend has Seasonal Affective Disorder, and it’s hitting him pretty hard. I have been there. In fact, if I keep hanging around naked and depressed (but distracted!), I might end up there again.

I have been trying out the concept of maybe moving myself from the “suffering from depression” to the “recovering from depression” category. I have referred to myself as “recovering” to a few people online, and every time it felt wildly dangerous and insane. Like I was opening a door and shoving myself through it, along with that massive feeling of dread that comes with all breaking of inner taboos and compulsions.

But shouldn’t recovering from depression be happy news? Why the shock? Why the fear?

Because depression serves a function : it keeps people from having to deal with life. It’s a delusional structure just like any other, only it disguises itself by being unrelentingly negative, and delusions are things that make people happy, right? Ergo unhappiness MUST be real.

But it’s not. It’s as much a self-serving delusion as any religious faith and as inaccurate a worldview as any pollyana optimist.

But at least the optimist is happy.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I fucked up. Maybe. I’m not sure.

Let’s just say it’s a possibility.

First, the good news : it has been confirmed that my Kwantlen debt problems have been solved. I am, definitively, all paid up. In fact, the account has a 43 surplus in it.

So that chapter of my life is over, anyhow.

But when I was trying to figure out why the Kwantlen system still won’t let me register for classes and keeps telling me it’s because I haven’t paid my deposit (???), I came across this page.

Of particular interest was the part where it said that the application deadline for the spring semester was Dec 1 of this year.

You know…. a week ago.

See, what had occurred to me was that maybe I was supposed to apply for the next semester all over again. I had been assuming that once I was registered as a student, they would just assume I was coming back to, ya know, continue working towards my degree.

But if I was supposed to somehow know that I had to do all that again, well then, I am fucked. Best I could do is apply for the summer semester. And I don’t think I can handle six months of downtime.

I’m having trouble handling three weeks of it, and it just started today!

So I am thinking that if that proves to be the case, I will ends my relationship with Kwantlen and shift all my energies into getting into VFS. I definitely have a recent educational history, and that was the main impediment when I tried to get in before. Maybe this time, I can make it.

And honestly, writing for TV is my dream.

Not that I wouldn’t miss the KWantlen student life. I got to be in my element for a while.

But if I did get into VFS, it would definitely keep me busy, and I would love that. Downtime is my enemy. If that crazy one year Writing for TV and Movies course can give me an endless supply of things to do, that could be a godsend.

So I dunno. I have possibilities, shall we say.

Seriously, thought, how was I supposed to know that I had to apply for the Spring semester way back in November? I was busy doing actual schoolwork back then. And not everyone has an advisor to help them avoid the irrational pitfalls inherent in the system.

It’s not like there’s guidance counselors for adults.

So if that does turn out to be the case, I won’t feel too bad for missing it. It’s crazy to begin with and even crazier to expect people to know it.

I swear, it’s impossible to be paranoid and neurotic enough. I try to look out for danger, see problems before they happen, and be on top of things, and yet there is always something that I never could have seen coming lurking in the background to fuck things up for me.

Or maybe not. Maybe I am being all neurotic and crazy over this and it will turn out to be nothing to worry about and it was just my crazy brain lurching to conclusions like always.

I guess all the business with my student loan and subsequent funding campaign has made me pretty jumpy. I makes me feel, definitely not for the first time, like the world is full of rules that are obvious to everyone else but me, and it’s my destiny to stumble over said rules over and over again forever.

I’m a clueless genius. I really need a handler. Someone more competent than me.

So you know…. nearly everybody.

I just have to repeat to myself that I am magnificently talented and intellectually gifted, and so it’s not like without life competence I have nothing. It’s me and Einstein, gifted but goofy, geniuses and stumbling fools at the same time. Head in the clouds, not watching the road. Always stumbling into potholes.

I guess it’s good that I am adorkable. Otherwise, people would have no use for me at all. If you are doomed to mess up again and again in life, you damned well better be a sympathetic figure.

Still, I wish I could just legitimately have my shit together. I am doing my best, but I am just too inclined to spend my time inside my own mind to really be good at dealing with reality. And knowing this doesn’t really change anything, except maybe as a clue to where certain things lie on the “what you can’t change, accept” scale.

But it’s hard to accept it, because it keeps leading to me getting hurt and humiliated and confused. The idea that I can’t prevent that is just… unacceptable.

So maybe I need a new life strategy, one that somehow compensates for this flaw. I am not sure what the could be. Any possibility I can think of involves me sinking my hooks into some poor competent person and making them look after me, and that doesn’t seem right.

If I did somehow manage to do that… I would have to be really, really good for that person to make up for it. And I would do so out of gratitude alone. I have no illusions of not needing people.

I’m a delicate hothouse flower trying to make it in a cold, cold world. I either have to rope someone into looking after me, or learn to be my own competent caretaker.

That’s a far more delicate operation than you would think.

And I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. I did manage to get myself into school and then get myself into class every day and I will be getting mostly good grades.

If things do go sideways, I should just chalk it up to experience. Mistakes are worthwhile if you learn from them. Maybe I am more clueless than average, but I am above average in other things.

So maybe everyone gets the same amount of potential, and for most people, it ends up spread out evenly over many life skills and core competencies.

But some of us are “gifted” and end up really good at some things… and not so good in the others.

I guess I can live with that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Here I am, sitting in my last Ideology and Politics class.

No idea what we are going to do, besides hand our final assignments  in. There is no final exam, so teaching us anything  new would be pointless  from an academic point of view.

Guess I will find out.

(—)

Been feeling depressed, which is not a surprise. I fell into the Saturday hole. Directionless, drifting, depressed, floating back and forth between computer and tablet and the occasional meal. Doing my final Ideology and Politics assignment helped, but only till the rough draft was done. Then my motivation fell apart and I did nothing more to it after that except proofread it.

So I basically handed in my rough draft today. Not the first time I have done that in my life. In fact, it’s the norm. The headline would be me sweating and slaving over something to make it as good as I can.

And I don’t know how to feel about that. But I do know one thing : my therapist was right. I am afraid to put my full effort into things because then I would have to care about the outcome and I just can’t handle that. I feel like I would be a neurotic wreck if I actually fully emotionally invested in my work. My way is to breeze along on natural talent. I do what I do and move on.

And the thing is, it kind of works for me. I do surprisingly well for someone who, deep down, doesn’t take things seriously. Not all the way.

You have seen me in this very space try to tell myself that I need to knuckle down, apply myself, and show the world what I can do when I really put my mind to something.

But it doesn’t change anything. I am still half-assing my way through life. I still don’t study for tests and submit first drafts as finished work and act, in some ways, like a total arrogant jagoff.

And it works. I get good marks. But it still feels wrong.

I know that’s not the way the average person thinks I should be. There;s plenty of people around the world who would love to have my gifts and would work super hard if they got them.

And I know that’s not the way society thinks I should be. Talented people aren’t supposed to coast through life on minimum effort. They are supposed to devote their talents to making the world a better place.

Hell, I know that it’s not the way I think I should be either. I want to be the sort of person who is passionately engaged with life and who devotes themselves full tilt to everything he does, pouring all his energy and talent into the world in order to improve the lot of life of all of humanity.

I just don’t know if I have a choice in the matter.

Maybe that just can’t be part of the deal for me. Maybe my deal is that I have to take that attitude to get through life and I will just have to be content with whatever that attitude can bring me. Maybe the best that I can hope for is to look for places where that level of effort and commitment is enough.

Maybe, deep down, I still want to be the precocious kid who wowed the crowds with stuff that was super easy for me. As much as I hated being bored in class all the time as a kid, some part of me must still want life to be like that. Simple, undemanding, and oh so easy.

I don’t know how to change that. But unearthing it like this surely must help.

Guess I still have a lot of growing up to do, on the inside. No more whining when life asks me for something that doesn’t come easily to me and pretending that makes life so cruel and unfair. Other people have to try hard and overcome themselves in order to grow. What makes me so special?

I have been whining like that since the fifth grade. I remember the day we learned long division. It was the first academic thing I had ever encountered which didn’t come naturally to me. I didn’t instantly grasp it like I had with everything else so far. And I freaked out, all frustrated and crying. Mrs Rogers practically had to talk me down in order to get me to where I could get it.

Long before that, I had already made my opposition to do anything even vaguely hard clear. I was very physically uncoordinated and so I hated gym and arts and crafts. So I refused to do them.

But goddamned it, I could have tried. I could have made my best-faith effort. But no. I whined and pouted and defied the teacher. No wonder none of them really liked me.

I was so spoiled.

I want to move from where and who I am now into a place where I become the sort of person who loves challenges and looks forward to learning new things in the process of overcoming them. I might not make it all the way there, but it’s still my destination.

Maybe the problem is that nothing has actually forced me to focus yet. I can still coast along. I still don’t feel challenged. I still don’t take my studies really seriously.

Maybe I am the sort of dude who adapts to his situation, and so nothing changes unless the situation changes. Water might resist containment, but only when it is safely contained can it truly relax.

I know that metaphor probably doesn’t mean much to anyone else, but it is a deep truth to me.

So that’s my challenge : to overcome my whiny, “run to momma”, give up the minute things get hard and claim that means the world is cruel and unfair self, and replace it with a stronger, tougher, more muscular me who powers through the bad spots and who doesn’t let little setbacks get him down.

Assuming, of course, that it’s possible.

I think it is.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I am someone pretending to be me, and frankly, making a hash of it.

I read an article about the well known psychological phenomenon known as impostor syndrome . Basically, it describes the feeling that man high achieving people have that they are not really the person people think they are. They just have everyone fooled somehow, and any day now, people will figure this out and they will be exposed and everything will come crashing down.

I have known people like that.

It’s a very tragic syndrome from an outsider’s point of view. Here is this person doing genuinely amazing things who, against all rationality and reason, think that the person who did those things is not really them. It’s a bullshit version of them that doesn’t really exist and some day people will figure it out.

And the thing is, the people thinking these negative thoughts are actually soothed by them. The idea that this tense charade will end soon is a relief to them, even as it spurs their anxiety.

So what is going on? The sad truth is that a negative self-image is so deeply ingrained in these people that they will deny reality itself in order to maintain it. Faced with evidence that threatens this negative status quo, like genuine accomplishment, the only solution is to deny said evidence.

That is actually a lot less frightening to these people than the far more fundamental shift that improved self-esteem would entail. That’s why the controlling factor is how deeply ingrained this negative self-image has become. The more deeply ingrained it is, the bigger a change positive evidence represents.

And it is the nature of the human animal to resist that kind of change. Our emotional equilibrium is maintained by a system that by default is set to reject big changes. It’s designed to protect the integrity of our knowledge base and even our sense of reality, but it can also be our worst enemy when it works to maintain the deep belief in our own worthlessness rather than accept that the undeniable evidence of our own achievement is valid and thus attached to us.

Another thing mentioned in the article is the difficulty in valuing that which comes easily to you. Regular readers will recognize that as something I have talked about in this space many (many) times. The labour theory of value is the strongest and most natural value system, far stronger than any extrinsic valuations, and under that theory, value equals difficulty.

After all, we’d be far more impressed by a grandmother running a marathon than a fit young person. Why? Because we’d assume it was far more difficult for Grandma.

Therefore, if you have a natural talent for something, it can be hard to put much value in it. Like I have said before, it’s hard to get excited about something that, for you, is as easy as tying your shoes. Even if others are impressed by it, you’re still like, “Whatever. Glad it made you happy. ”

Which brings the conversation around to me. You probably saw that coming a mile away. When I posted a link to the article on Facebook, I rather flippantly said something like “Well, I am pretty confident in my talent, so I am not worried about this happening to me. ”

And it’s true that I am perfectly willing to accept evidence that I am outrageously talented, incredibly intelligent, and possessed of a startlingly unique and insightful point of view that will ease humanity through the growing pains of a new and glorious future.

It’s like I have room reserved on my ego shelf just for evidence like that. Part of me has always believed I was exceptional. Part of me, in fact, would be pleased to receive such evidence… but not surprised.

But that’s not where my impostor syndrome lies. Those are dream achievements, not the real thing. What about the things I have already achieved? How did I handle that?

My first instinct is to reflexively say “What achievements?” but that just shows the severity of the problem. Because I have achieved certain things.

Like high marks, for example. I got my marks for my Intro to Journalism class last week. 91 percent. That is an impressive mark by anyone who isn’t a Chinese parent’s standards. And yeah, it feels pretty good to get a mark like that. It even makes me feel abit better about myself. Golly, I really am smart!

But it doesn’t impress me all that much, because it’s not much higher than the sort of marks I usually get, and which I take for granted. When you can get 83 percent on an exam without even studying, it is really hard to see it as a big deal.

I won’t tell the story again, but regular readers know that I didn’t even know I was on the Honor Roll in my last year of high school until graduation night. And even then, I found it more funny than anything else.

So while I have never felt like I was an impostor who was only fooling the people, I have definitely been guilty of discounting genuine achievements because it is very hard for me to change my deep down lack of self worth. So I treat it like it’s no big deal.

But I have done some impressive things. I wrote, directed, and starred in a play that took me 24 hours to write. I started two highly successful communities (Vancouver Freecycle and the local furry community) and nursed them along until they were big enough to survive on their own. I am in the process of conquering my depression and getting my life back. My creative writing teacher said I was a “very strong student”.

Most people haven’t done any of those things. And if I told people about them, they would think those were pretty cool things to have done.

And it does make me feel good to remember those things. It’s nice to know my time on Earth has not been a total drain on society.

And yet, deep down, my self-worth is still…. troublingly low.

What the hell is wrong with me>

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I am waiting for the bus to take me to my last Creative Writing : New Forms And Media class.

I will miss it. I know I bitched and grumbled about the assignments from time to time, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun.

(—)

I’m in class now. There’s donuts. No fair, world! I was so good today at 7-11. Did not buy a single donut or cookie or anything. I was determined to be a good boy at least until Sunday, and I had already been good since Wednesday. I have gotten way too lax about eating the bad stuff and I was determined to “dry out”, as the alcoholics would say, and give my body a chance to at least work on any sugar overload before I went and ate the bad stuff again.

But then you had to go plop a tray of donuts in front of me. I’m not made of stone!

That was a really good cruller, too. Dammit.

(—)

Home now. Class ended at 7ish for us eager beavers who already had our final projects done.

You know… this ol’ thang.

Still not totally happy with it, but whatever.

I thought about sticking around and doing my blogging from the lab for a change. Get one last chance to hang out with my classmates. Then again, if I left early, I might be able to take the bus when it was running on a normal schedule instead of dumping me off at the Skytrain terminal and making me walk home those last two blocks. Like an animal.

And that way, I wouldn’t have to pay for a cab.

But then I thought, but what if it isn’t on the usual schedule, and I end up getting dropped off at the terminal. Then what? I can’t walk two blocks with my messed up knee.

Which pisses me off, because it’s a lovely night tonight (despite the weatherman’s dire warnings) and if it wasn’t for my bum knee, I would have been quite happy to walk those two blocks. It would have been a pleasant stroll on a lovely fall evening.

Heck, I might have even walked all the way home.

But with my knee hurting and worrying the heck out out of me, I am minimizing the steps I take. And that really pisses me off because I have finally gotten myself to a place where I am somewhat fit and could take more activity, and now I have to act like I did before I ever went back to school.

That fucking sucks.

So I ended up taking a cab home. The driver was super old. Not something I would normally note, but apparently he thought “just past Cook and Cooney” meant “turn left onto Cook”, despite my having told him my address was 6611 Cooney.

So when we turned onto Cook, I was rather surprised.

He was good enough to turn off the meter at that point, anyhow.

I think I am getting better at asserting myself. When he made the mistake, I said “No, we’ve gone the wrong way” in a firm but not aggressive tone that expressed my annoyance without making it some big deal.

That’s my model for how to handle situations like that, I think. There’s a lot of room between not expressing anger ever and dumping it on people like my Dad did.

I think I even managed to put some iron in my voice and employ a leadership tone, two things I have always wanted to be able to do. Turns out the missing ingredient was irritation.

I wasn’t sarcastic or angry or even loud. I just spoke in bold with periods.

“No. We’ve turned the wrong way. You’ll have to turn back. Turn left onto Cooney and stop at the first large apartment building on the right. ”

I suppose if you had a smoldering-rage abusive parent, that might come across as aggressive. But I think I struck the right chord.

And who knows, maybe I have found my Leadership Voice. I have, in the past, found it hard to believe that anyone would do something just because I told them to do it. That has, shall we say, hampered my leadership potential. Well, that and an aversion to responsibility.

But now that I am become less of a depressed lazy slagpile of a person, I am warming up to the idea that my role in life is to lead, organize, and administrate. That’s the next phase for me. I might not get there anywhere soon because I still have a lot of getting over myself to do, but I feel like my next evolution is to become the sort of person who gets things done. Who makes things happen.

Meanwhile, I am going to do my best to stay busy during the Winter Break. I have already decided that, come what may, I am going to get dressed exactly like I was going to go out every day. Getting dressed has a magical effect on me, turning me from a half-asleep unfocused glob of person into a focused, awake, ready to take on the world person.

My therapist suggested that I also try to get out of the house every day, and he has a point. Right now, I leave the house 6 days out of 7, and that’s very good for me. It would be a shame to lose that. So I am going to try to keep leaving the house, even if it’s just to get a bus to Lansdowne or something.

But what of my busted knee? Well, I came to the decision that I am going to start using my cane again. I have neglected to do so before now because it’s awkward and irritating and another thing to lose.

And it attracts sympathetic attention, which is sort of nice, but makes me feel feeble.

But I was in serious pain after (and while) coming down the stairs outside Kwantlen, and if my knee is to get better, I will have to take the burden off it some.

But then again, maybe I should stay ioff it altogether. Which would mean returning to being a slag.

I am in a weird position in life.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Got to class five minutes before it started and the classroom was EMPTY. For a moment, I was in a reality tailspin, the sort of thing where if it was a TV show, there would be high pitched string glissandos and the camera would zoom in and out rapidly.

Obviously, I then sat down and tried to figure out what was going on, or as my extremely neurotic mind phrased it, “oh God, did everyone know there was no class today but me?”

The really sad part is how plausible a scenario that is. Being congenitally clueless is a rough, rough road.

Fortunately, another student showed up before I could finalize plans to figure out how to get an fMRI to find out exactly what part of my brain was broken.

Even if it turned out to be inoperable, I would still prefer to know.

Instead, we were split into two teams and made to debate “Climate Change : Reform, or Revolution?”. And I ended up on the “Reform” side.

And that pissed me off at first because I think it’s too late form reform and only revolution can save us. But once me and my team started talking about it, I realized that if you define reform as working within the system and revolution as working outside the system, I am a total Reformer.

Which is more in line with how I usually think anyhow. Revolution is too imprecise a word, and carries a lot of baggage like an association with anger, violence, and dogmatism with it.

I’m a reformer, and my heroes are reformers. They wanted to improve the system, not destroy it. Even my hero Martin Luther did not set out to destroy Catholicism. He wanted to reform it. He wanted it to return it to being what it said it was as opposed to what it really was.

And me, I want to make politicians actually put the environmentalism they all say they believe in into actual concrete action.

And not bullshit like that conference in Paris. Fuck that shit, that’s just kabuki theater. It’s twelve days of looking like you are Doing Something about the environment and global warming. They will talk, they will discuss, then will debate. And it will convince most of the people there, especially the liberal intellectuals who work in the professional environmentalism industry, that they have really done something and made a lot of progress on many important issues, and reached a real understanding that something must be done and it must be done soon.

Which is exactly what everyone thought before the damned thing even started. And people like the Koch brothers will not feel even slightly threatened because they know absolutely nothing will have been accomplished and nothing, absolutely nothing, will change.

Oh, and it absolutely does not matter that there will be no protests at this conference because of the Paris attacks, although the paranoid schizoid in me wonders if our sociopathic oligarchs would be capable of engineering a brutal terrorist attack just to keep those pesky protesters away.

No, it doesn’t matter because protests don’t matter. Protests are total bullshit and have been for at least a decade. These people, the high muck a mucks, expect there to be protesters wherever they go. It is totally normal for them and therefore means nothing to them. It’s just the usual background noise.

What is worse, these pricks and bitches have managed to get laws passed that completely violated the letter and the spirit of freedom of speech by banning protesters from coming anywhere near close enough to even inconvenience them in the slightest.

Honestly, I imagine that among the top 1 percent, you’re simply not ANYbody unless you’ve been protested.

In the modern day, protests have about as much of a chance of having an effect as a rain dance. And like rain dances, they furnish people with the illusion that they are doing something without actually having the slightest effect on anything.

The only difference is that by pure dumb luck, occasionally, it rains. That is enough to keep the idea that rain dances work alive.

Protests don’t work and haven’t worked since the powers that be made sure that they would never, ever, ever have to pass through a line of protesters ever again. But people continue to perform this ancient ritual because it makes them feel like they are “doing something” without asking much of them.

Oh, the party is in front of some office building? Cool. I guess we’re protesting something.

So yeah…. it occurred to me today that by some measures, I have become a lot more cynical over time. I don’t see it that way, of course. I see it as my understanding the world better and better.

But when I was sharing this stuff with my debate partners, all of whom are fresh faced youth new to the whole thinking about politics thing, I did feel a stab of guilt. Like I was taking their innocence away on some level. And I can justify it by saying “it’s better that they know the truth so they can direct their efforts towards things that might actually make a difference”, but I dunno.

That sounds sort of like something a self-justifying dickwad would say after he pops some kid’s balloon.

So I dunno. I have said before that spending a lot of time by yourself can lead to having no idea how your opinions might sound to someone else, or how harsh and uncompromising you might sound expressing them.

Things grow strange in the dark.

Then again, these are not the Occupy kids, who clearly thought that just by making it clear that they didn’t approve of something and it upset them they would change it. These kids are the more pragmatic crop of Millennials, who like things like fact-checking and results based approaches.

So maybe I didn’t say anything to them that they hadn’t thought themselves, and I am feeling guilty for no reason at all.

How typical for a liberal!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.