No matter how strange you think you are, there are others like you.

That’s the main lesson of the Internet, in my experience. Even if you have an intense fetish for sex during an earthquake, somewhere out there on the Web there’s a message board with other weirdos just like you waiting to welcome you will open arms and tips on how to turn any bed into a “magic fingers” bed with vibration power that measures on the Richter scale… and it’s cheaper than you’d think!

It adds a whole new layer to humanism. Before, the unity of humanity and the basic message that are far more alike than we are different had to be taken on faith past a certain point. But now, you can find all the evidence you need with a simple Google search. The Internet showcases both the common thread of humanity and its myriad ways to express itself on all fronts.

Genetically, we are all 98 percent identical. And that makes sense when you think about how we all have the same organs in the same places and so forth. Even if you were an alien who knew nothing of humanity, you would note that we are all the same except for minor superficial differences in skin color and the fine details of our skeletal structures.

And yet we talk of race as if that’s a real thing. Sigh.

Myself, I take some comfort in this unity. I can’t quite believe that there are others like me out there… I am too strange a creation for that. The best that I can hope for is people with whom I have a lot in common.

But as far as I can tell, on a fundamental level, I will always be a thing apart. I have given up on the idea of a community of like-minded individuals. My specifications for like-mindedness have to include my intellect and as far as I know, mine is unique.

So I will always be a giant among pygmies, even though it feels like the opposite sometimes. Even if I find the right man for me, odds are I will be substantially smarter than him. And that is something I am going to have to deal with.

I can only hope that emotional and sexual factors can overcome any intellectual gap. If I love someone dearly and with every fiber of my being and that love translates into the erotic and we make sweet sweet love together…. who cares if I have to explain myself a little more than I’d like?

And it’s not like I am utterly alone. People like my friends “get’ me. Maybe not fully, but considerably more than necessary for me to feel like I have friends.

I think about my mind sometimes and all its layers and complexities and power. I think my real goal, when I talk about wanting to put myself fully into my writing as if I was climbing into the computer with it,. is to use every single mental resource I have in the writing and thus be able to get that feeling of being fully engaged and operating at peak performance.

The Zone, as it is sometimes called.

It’s hard to reconcile the knowledge of what my mind is capable of with my low self esteem. That’s why I almost totally dismissed the knowledge of how bright I am for most of my life. It just wasn’t compatible with my self-loathing.

So I would just shrug the whole thing off as meaningless. Sure, I am smart, but what good has it ever done me? It was just a meaningless number on an IQ test somewhere. As far as I could see (at the time), all it did was isolate me from others.

I think it was my academic year at Kwantlen that reminded me, however feebly, that I have exceptional abilities. Once in a school environment, I remembered how easy school always was for me and how others didn’t’ have it that easy. That makes it hard to ignore how my life was not like those of others.

Thus began the journey to convincing myself that I had something to offer the world. That journey is still ongoing because I still feel naked and exposed and useless and like I am a liability to the world sometimes. The fact that I have paying work now helps enormously. But I still feel it now and then.

Maybe I should buy myself something nice with the money. Right now I have a bit over CDN $150 sitting on my reloadable VISA card, waiting to be spent. Another $75 will land there some time this week, and that will just keep happening for as long as my animation script lasts. I should treat myself with the money somehow so that I can really feel how I have made money.

Right now, it’s just a number on a screen, in a sense.

Of course, getting myself something nice requires being able to figure out what I want and what would actually make my life better. Tall order.

Something to make my bed more comfy could help me by making it easier to sleep and thus improve the quality of my sleep. And that could make everything easier. There is nothing in life that sleepiness cannot make harder and worse.

Or maybe I could get some kind of cushion or backrest for my office chair. Some sort of gizmo to keep my butt from getting sore or ease the strain on my back.

Honestly, anything to relax my back could rock my frigging world. There’s a lot of gizmos for that out there, but I don’t know if they would work on me. I would be willing to pay a lot for something that could handle my big bones.

I know, I will buy myself a gift-pack of coupons for massages from a professional masseur. One of those “whole body massage with full release” guys from the gay personals. That could do me good on all kinds of levels.

Maybe I just need a whole lot of sugar free candy.  It’s the simplest solution.

Regardless, I now know that I should start poking around for something that will make me happy in order to truly feel rewarded for my labour.

Know where I can buy a boyfriend?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.