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10:15 a.m. - June 10, 2002
A good scent and unpleasant thoughts
From my desk I can see through the sliding glass door into the backyard and right now the door is open and a warm breeze that smells like moist dirt and sun and the spicy green of the yellow-flowered plant in the terra cotta pot fills the room. In theory I'm working but it is difficult to concentrate when I want to play outside and place my hands in the dirt.

I don't understand why I'm hard on myself and can't let go. When writing that it's unclear to me what I should let go of, much less doing it. Last night I was watering the backyard when neighbor dude came up to the fence and said You Want To Share A Bowl and while I knew he wasn't talking about cornflakes it did take me a moment to understand just what exactly he offered, so before I looked down on him and his pot-smoking ways I invented a lie and said I was on my way out--and to make the lie truth I went for a drive.

Is this the symptom or the cure?

Bathsheba wrote that when I let down my guard as I mostly do here there are people who want to be close (she mentioned stalkers, but that's because she doesn't understand), but my immediate response is that these readers are curious, watching me go downhill to impairment faster than a kid on a Wonder Bread bag on a greased slide at the local park. The question is then how to bridge the gap between the inside and the outside but really, Non-Descript is just like the outside, the outside that's uninteresting and standoffish and borderline geek.

What I want is acceptance of self, not in the talk show sense, but in feeling comfortable in my own skin. You know what I mean. Even when alone I'm not at ease with myself, always on guard. Am frequently told to loosen up, show some character and personality. The problem is, I am. That's me, the quiet guy who yearns to be loud who's into politics and economics and reading and education and school and working with his hands and listening to people and hiking and swimming and doing my best--not always to show off, but sometimes. What I am not is chilling with you and talking about nothing and letting loose at the local bar making everyone laugh and invited to the party because I'm fun to be around and can always be counted on to relate anecdotes and tell funny stories and adaptable enough to fit in everywhere. I'm none of that. Bothersome is the notion that I don't fit in with myself.

 

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