Wait no…. i meant to say “cocky”. Stupid autocorrect.

This subject has been on my mind again lately. It feels like it’s the only solution to my tragically low self esteem that is available to me.

I can’t make a directly logical case for it. From an absurdly detached point of view, the “proper” form of self-esteem is based on a measured, balanced, reasonable, and above all objective assessment of one’s attributes and resources.

But fuck that. God, I can’t believe I used to think like that. Or rather think I thought like that, it was all bullshit anyhow. A way of stroking my ego about how reasonable and rational and logical a person I was, unlike all those irrational people out there.

Or something to that effect.

Well to hell and back on a Greyhound bus with that. It was delusional from top to bottom and ultimately quite toxic to my psychological wellbeing.

I am not logical. I am an angry, stubborn, unwise, irrational, and somewhat self-destructive and self-defeating bundle of neuroses in the shape of a man. ^[1]

Plus I am genuinely crazy. Diagnosed and under treatment. Any self-assessment has to include this extremely salient fact. Even apart from all the other factors, I am a crazy person and I do crazy things all the time because of that.

One irrational thing I am definitely going to stop doing is judging myself by this laughably wrongheaded notion of “logic”.

I am not a wise man and I accept that I will continue to do dumb shit until the day I die and I am under no delusion that I am some sort of atheistic angel who can or will always act in the most ethically spotless way.

I will do my best but I am merely flesh and bone like the rest of humanity, and thus I am fallible and illogical and quite often utterly clueless about life.

But what do you expect? I haven’t lived life at all. When would I have gotten good at it?

Some things you can only learn by doing. How to live your life is one of them.

All any of us can do is do our best and hope it’s enough. I will always struggle to see the truth of things and to be a rationally compassionate person who uses the tools of logic and analysis as ways to get the best outcomes for everybody.

Pragmatic utilitarianism is a highly demanding discipline in that way.

But I will do so with a full and rich understanding that no matter how high my ideals reach or how pure and selfless my reasoning, I will always been just another silent soul piloting a meat puppet around and trying not to soil the rug.

I hereby absolve myself of any and all responsibility to behave logically, make sense to myself, stay “in control”, and to act like I think I was made by Doctor Soong. .

Instead, I am going to try to life life like I’m on a rocket ride to hell and determined to get as many stamps on my passport as there are in the world.

I mean what the hell. I have given rational restraint a good long try.

Time to give enlightened lunacy a chance.

More after the break.

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A pair pf khakis

Oh right. I was going to talk about being cocky but then I threadjacked myself into talking about something more important.

Let’s try again.

I know that I have the potential to be really smug and cocky, because that’s how I was when I was in my early 20’s, until a few things knocked me down a peg or two.

But now I think I took it too far. I vastly overcompensated, I think th forces that led to my being full of myself would have been a good thing if I had been less drastic and learned to harness them and modulate their excesses instead of cutting them out at the root.

Because quote honestly, I’m amazing. Intelligence, wit, charisma, etc. By most people’s reckoning, I have every reason to think highly of myself and to use that self-belief to be a confident and effective advocate for myself and really sell myself to potential employers as the miracle man who can solve their problems in a flash.

A nd maybe that would work. Maybe I would ride that rocket to the stars and end up rich and famous at long last.

More likely, I would fall flat on my ass. Hard. But that’s how we learn. We fuck up, fall down, whine about it a bit, then get back up amd try again, this time with the knowledge we gained by failing.

And to be frank, I am sick of pre-failing myself. Of assuming that I can only fail and therefore there is no use trying.

I am at the point where a spectacular failure seems a lot better than not trying at all. I would be proud to know I crashed and burned trying to better myself rather than just meekly keep my head low and stay out of trouble.

Fuck that, I want trouble.

Give me a fight and I’ll fight it. And I will love doing it. A deep and powerful part of me wants to keep challenging the world to fight me until I find a worthy goddamned opponent and face a real struggle for a change.

Think about it. Either I would achieve epic victory or go down in glorious flames knowing that I had really tried by best.

Or maybe I would fail a bunch then win. Also acceptable.

I know one thing : I am very hungry for challenge. Also money, of course. I have been living below the poverty line for a very long time now., Getting quite sick of it.

I deserve a better life than this. I’m an amazing creature, and I deserve to be living a successful middle class lifestyle at a minimum.

Guess I better get out there and get it!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.