For whatever reason, I have mostly kept my introspective musings out of my YouTube videos, but today was one of the exceptions. Today, I wanted to ask a question.

So I did.

I suppose I keep them separate because, in my own weirdly sideways way, I am trying to entertain people with my YouTube videos, and by and large, people talking about their childhoods and their mental illness is not what most people would consider entertainment.

But I think it does me some good, and it’s not like my usual videos are all that great to begin with, so it’s not like I have a lot to lose by baring my soul to the whole Internet in a slightly more palatable form.

I keep telling myself that I need to find currently hot videos and then post video replies to them in order to raise my profile, but YouTube has made doing a video reply so damn complicated and hard to find that when it occurs to me to do it, I get frustrated trying to figure that damned thing out and end up giving up.

Not proud of that, but that’s just the kind of person I am. Low frustration tolerance.

It used to be that you just clicked a button that said “Leave a video reply” and just started talking to your webcam. But now they have hidden that option away somewhere.

I can understand why. I can only imagine what kind of abuses that function might have been subjected to by that cadre of Internet scumbags who ruin everything sooner or later.

But it still frustrates a person like me who wants to used it, scout’s honor, for what it is intended for : participating in fruitful discussion.

Or participating in public goofiness. I am cool with both of those.

But anyhoo, back to talk about my video du jour. Talking about my stuff out loud, on camera, does seem like it is a more potent form of the nostrum that is writing about them. So purely from a therapeutic point of view, pouring that stuff out in video form is a good thing and might even speed my recovery.

Might not be the smartest thing career-wise, but seeing as I don’t even have a career now, and I probably won’t be able to really make one for myself until I am mentally healthier anyhow and have more drive, focus, determination, and that long sought after ability to stick with things anyhow.

So what the hell. Maybe I will do more videos like today in the future. They don’t have to be knockout dazzling entertainment destined to take the Internet by storm.

Because that’s not what they are for. They are to help me feel better, think better, GET better.

I still go for long spells forgetting that I am a very sick person with a serious illness. It’s just such a depressing thought. It is so much more fun to not think about it and just float through life.

Well, maybe not more fun. But easier. So much easier.

About the video… I know that there was more than my IQ separating me from my fellow students. Looking back, I had a pretty maladaptive big mouth too. I said whatever popped into my head, and not necessarily gently, either, and that is no way to make friends and influence people.

But I knew no better. Before school, nobody had been there to teach me to be less unthinkingly blunt. If anything, I was mildly rewarded for it, because adults find smartass kids to be funny. And looks at all those kids on the sitcoms I soaked up like a sponge. They were smartasses too.

That’s fiction, though. In real life, being a smartass makes people hate you. And I was just too socially clueless to realize what effect a blunt yet barbed remark could have.

I mentioned Head Of The Class in my video, and I was really on the path to becoming like Dennis, the fat kid. Sarcastic, mocking, abusively, smug, superior. But luckily, I am too sensitive to end up there, and too dedicated to being responsible for the predictable effects of my actions.

I could never give in to my dark side because I honestly can’t stand to hurt people. Hurting others is like hurting myself because I know I will feel their pain. That’s why I love making people happy. I will get to share in that, too, and it becomes marvelously self-reinforcing.

But still, I know I did myself no favours with my big blunt mouth when I was a kid. And worst of all for a kid who could not get along with his fellow students, it turned my teachers against me too.

Sure, when a kid points out a mistake to a teacher, we all laugh because we love to see someone puncture authority and most of us like seeing someone representing truth, intellect, and knowledge score a little victory over the powers of conformity and the oppressive hand of The System.

I have even used some of the stories of my being smarter than the teacher as funny anecdotes for precisely that reason. They go over big time.

But right or wrong, good or bad, David or Goliath, that teacher now hates me. I humiliated them in front of their students, destroyed some of the sense of authority that is vital for keeping a classroom of elementary school students in line, and did it in a way that leaves them feeling helpless and betrayed.

And yet, they can’t do anything about it, because a) I am right, and b) if they sent me to the principal’s office for it, they would just end up looking even more foolish and then all their colleagues would know about it too.

Trust me… a teacher tried that and that’s exactly what happened.

And yet, at the same time, I was pathetically dependent on them because the students all hated me.

Talking about biting the hand that feeds you!

That’s all from me for today. More tomorrow!