Apology for being snippy
Alright. I’ve had some time to cool down. I apologize that my last post sounded snippy and mean, but here’s my problem (I say, as if I only have one).
I don’t have a lot of things on which I pride myself. I’m not the smartest guy around. I don’t read people very well. I’m not some super-looking fellow. I don’t have a whole lot of talents. I’m fairly insensitive. I may be okay at some that I can do (I can cook, at least), but I don’t have a whole lot of qualities that I find as being all that admirable.
The only quality on which I pride myself, and I mean really pride myself, is that I am a good person. I may not be rich. I may not be handsome. I may not be hard-working. But damn it all, I’m a good man. I’ve spent the better part of my lifetime training myself and educating myself so that I know what the right thing to do is, know why it is the right thing to do, and do it anyway, even when I wish I could do something else.
I only live off of $850 dollars a month, and that has to pay for my rent, food, utilities, cable modem, gas, car insurance, and a host of other expenses like the astronomical price of textbooks each semester. Despite all that, I give a $150 dollar check each month to charity, and feel guilty that I’m paying for luxuries for myself (like a cable-modem) when I could use that money to save someone else’s life.
When people think that I’m not only not a good person, but an actively bad person, it hurts. I’d be able to brush it off, but you all are my friends, and that makes it hurt even more coming from you. In effect, you’ve said that I have failed in the only pursuit into which I’ve ever poured myself.
When I do say that, I can brush it off as me being overly critical of myself. When one of you says that to me, it means that you agree.
And that hurts.
I don’t have a lot of things on which I pride myself. I’m not the smartest guy around. I don’t read people very well. I’m not some super-looking fellow. I don’t have a whole lot of talents. I’m fairly insensitive. I may be okay at some that I can do (I can cook, at least), but I don’t have a whole lot of qualities that I find as being all that admirable.
The only quality on which I pride myself, and I mean really pride myself, is that I am a good person. I may not be rich. I may not be handsome. I may not be hard-working. But damn it all, I’m a good man. I’ve spent the better part of my lifetime training myself and educating myself so that I know what the right thing to do is, know why it is the right thing to do, and do it anyway, even when I wish I could do something else.
I only live off of $850 dollars a month, and that has to pay for my rent, food, utilities, cable modem, gas, car insurance, and a host of other expenses like the astronomical price of textbooks each semester. Despite all that, I give a $150 dollar check each month to charity, and feel guilty that I’m paying for luxuries for myself (like a cable-modem) when I could use that money to save someone else’s life.
When people think that I’m not only not a good person, but an actively bad person, it hurts. I’d be able to brush it off, but you all are my friends, and that makes it hurt even more coming from you. In effect, you’ve said that I have failed in the only pursuit into which I’ve ever poured myself.
When I do say that, I can brush it off as me being overly critical of myself. When one of you says that to me, it means that you agree.
And that hurts.
posted by The Academian | 6:17 PM
2 Comments:
Did you really mean to type
"Apology for being Snippy"?
I'm sure the content of the entry is fine, but the title is
simply unacceptable, I do believe I am going to stop reading this blog.
who apologizes for being snippy? what in the hell is being snippy?
As a parting comment, I leave you two bits of unsolicited advice:
1. drink more often, don't get silly drunk, drink good beer or good vodka, just drink, its the only way I'm able to interact with others. the more people you interact with, the more they will hopefully think you are charming, personable, etc., tell a friend, this guy's funny, go to karoake bar, stun the crowd with show tunes, something
2. hopefully step 1 will advance the cause of step 2, get some ass. The longer you go without "knowing a woman" the more likely the woman you do want to know will think there is something seriously wrong with you. Also, if you continue to wait, the chances are that the love of your life has not and if you have any sort of an ego at all it will pose significant problems. Do not wait for the perfect girl, or even that person who is the perfect girl's distant cousin. Get that damned albatross off your neck, whatever the cost.
though this advice is painfully obvious, its something I wish someone would have told me a long time ago, its not pretty, but it is practical
goodnight and good luck
-anon
Since you said you were going to stop reading my thoughts, anonymous comment leaver, I don’t really know why I’m responding to this, but I will anyway, just in case other people have similar thoughts or in case you check back to see one final reply. Perhaps if you do check back, this will convince you not to desert my readership. If not, well then, au revoir, and I honestly wish you well.
I have to admit that I’m surprised by this announcement, comment leaver. I had readily expected that the content of my posts might turn some people off. Hell, it has turned me off on occasion when I’ve looked back and seen the error of my ways (usually with a little help from my friends who surely must be getting sick at my lack of personal growth). I’ve expected that my constant descent into my neuroses and internal states must get tiring and burdensome for readers. I’d quite expected to be named as a poster boy for the existence of some kind of male version of PMS (only without the unpleasant physical side effects).
Quite frankly, the idea that I would lose readership over the lack of cleverness in a post title never really occurred to me. Sure, some of my titles are a bit on the clever side, like “Tuesdays with Larry” (a take-off on the popular book, “Tuesdays with Morrie”), “Either/Or” (which is the title of a work by Soren Kierkegaard concerning the existence of God), and “Fiat Justicia Ruat Coelumtet” (which were the words written by Lord Mansfield of England upon his abolishing slavery by judicial decree – a semi-secret message that I wished that we could end the slavery of non-human animals, thus giving my beloved old friend, Moses, some legal rights which could have been enforced on his behalf). Sometimes, though, I’m not feeling quite so clever, and I’ve got to simply be direct and honest with an appropriately descriptive title.
As for the word ‘snippy…’ Well, maybe it is a Midwestern thing. Maybe it is a thing with my family or some of the people I grew up around, but being snippy is just another word for being short with someone. I took some cheap shots (both at my friends and at myself) for which I was truly sorry and for which I’d like to make amends if I could find a better way to do so than apologizing.
And I, for one, apologize for being rude to people when I know that I’ve done wrong. If you don’t apologize to people to whom you were unnecessarily rude, you must surely lead a far more solitary life than me, or else have far more patient and understanding peers.
As for your unsolicited advice, I appreciate it when people give me advice, and I don’t mind that it was unsolicited. Advice of any kind is always welcome from people of any stripe, but I’m under no obligation to accept or follow any of it without reason.
I’m finding your reasons for drinking alcohol largely inapplicable to my context. That being under the influence of a mind-altering substance is the only way you can interact with others seems not to be an issue with me. I can interact with others, with moderate success (even if I have a larger than normal-seeming share of catastrophic blunders).
I still haven’t figured out whether drinking alcohol is acceptable or not. My theory of government and interpersonal relationships rests on a principle of reciprocal altruism and the rationality of all actors within the system. To the extent that alcohol interferes with that functioning, it is the equivalent of a declaration of war against the state, and justifies a re-entering of the state of nature between the now non-rational individual and the state, of which he was formerly a member. I know that may be stretching, but the logical sequence fits with other concepts in my theory, and until I can detect where there is a problem in the logic or premises, the conclusion must stand.
You are surely right that I need to interact with more people and more often, though. Doing so is a great way to expand my horizons and hopefully find a way to meeting that special Ms. Right who will help me grow into a better person, or at least help me become more contented with the person that I already am.
That leads me to your second piece of advice, which I’m fairly sure that I’ll have to reject outright. If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me that I just need to get laid in order to calm down and relax, I’d be a hundredaire. There was even a running joke at my campus housing among some friends that I was the mascot for the hall: nerdy, uncoordinated, and celibate. Hell, even my own brother has told me that I just need to get laid (he said this in response to a conversation I was having with him about the nature of distributive justice).
That said, I’m not looking for a piece of ass. I’m looking for love. Quite possibly, I’ll get the former when I find the latter, but taking the former just because I don’t have the latter is a fairly destructive thing to do. It has a tendency to lower standards to something fairly unbearable, and more to the point, it treats a woman as a vehicle for sexual pleasure rather than as a person. When you see persons as objects, it becomes easier to do awful things to them without guilt. I’m fairly sure that the world has had quite enough of treating people as a means to an ends and needs a bit more of treating people as ends unto themselves to recover. Forgive the language here, but sex without love is simply fucking. While that may be an enjoyable thing to do, I’ve been told, it cheapens the act of love into what can best be described as the rutting of non-sentient beasts. I prefer my pleasures a bit more intellectual and emotionally-connected than that. Maybe that deprives me of fucking, but I’m not out to sacrifice quality for quantity.
The longer I go without “knowing a woman” (interesting biblical reference from someone advocating for me to start boning anything that walks) the more likely the woman will think there is something seriously wrong with me? Perhaps. I can’t deny that or confirm that having had no experience with that being the case. In my context, however, there is something seriously wrong with me. Several somethings, actually. If she thinks that, then we are in total agreement. What I need is not blanket agreement that I’ve got problems, but positive criticism enabling me to learn to fix those problems, or new perspectives that show me why those things I thought were problems really aren’t.
If she thinks there is something wrong with me for waiting for emotional connection without screwing my way through a hundred drunken sorority parties, she may, in fact, not be the kind of woman I’d like to end up spending the rest of my life with anyway.
I appreciate your readership, however long or short it may have been, and regardless of whether you continue that readership into the future or not.
To any of you still left among my companions on my journey of personal growth, I’m sorry, again, for being snippy.
--[Academian]
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