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Sometimes I feel like not even I have any sort of understanding of myself. Given that, I can only imagine the level of understanding people who don’t have the luxury of sharing my thoughts have of me. Here is something that has always given me trouble, as well as currently leaves me totally jaded. I am going to base the following assumptions on my general perception of people I have known and the perception of others that various people have shared with me throughout the years. Naturally, my assessment is more opinion than anything and will likely be very skewed, but it is the best any of us have to work with.

Relative to most people I have encountered in my life, I feel like I am one of the more humble or perhaps modest people by far. I was just raised to be soft-spoken about myself, polite, unassuming and trust in the adage, “Pride before the fall”. It is just who I’ve been for as long as I can remember. I’ve had to wrestle with it a lot in my adult life. I don’t want to buy into or sell an air of false modesty or even being humble for the sake of being humble. I also have known plenty of people who really seem to have the whole concept down better than me. Formality kills me. Why? Because I get stuck in this whole formal zone for far too long. This kind of behavior is most dominant in the formal zone. Even in a highly familiar setting I tend to ride the humility parade more than any of the others. I think this wiring does insane, cruel things for my confidence, but this will only make sense in the context of the other half of it, so let’s get to that.

So you have this outwardly dominant persona of someone unassuming, always seeking to be modest before buying into oneself, but on the inside, where this megalopolis of personal thoughts reside lives a very different person. I don’t know how exactly I want to put this: I’m arrogant as piss, cocky as hell, probably a narcissist on some dire level… I have a really big head. Seriously, sometimes it feels like over half my thoughts contain some sort of notion of complete superiority over whoever may be in the same room with me. Two extremes, things I’d consider to be total opposites, one man, it can be like going East and West at the same time, oh wait, it always is like that. I’m a two headed monster with a sick addiction to headbutting.

So now we have this whole thing established: each separate and singular abilities, seeking out the path of greatest modesty while simultaneously holding a notion that I’m “better” than practically everyone around me. This has long affected every action I do, thing I say, or any other action I do that can be interpreted by someone external myself. It nearly always makes for a constant interior struggle anytime I’m in the public realm. Of course, you could say that it sounds like I’m just too self-affixated and as soon as I stop caring so much about myself that these issues would go away. I don’t think I’d go as far as to digress, but I also think that is somewhat oversimplifying. Along with that, I’d envision it being a straying away from an inward focus on multiple levels. For instance, I always want to make myself better. Everyday I’m alive, I need to seek some degree of self-improvement. Now that totally is going to lead to a tendency to be excessively self-obessesed, but on the other hand, I look at people individually, and entire populations and see that there is always so much to be desired; whether it be those who have achieved so much (I want to be like them), or those who could be so much more but settle for so little (I don’t want to be like them). So it is true that this desire to always improve can sometimes lead to too much self-focus, I’d much rather accept that risk than potentially be insulated from the whole reality that I can strive to be so much more than I am. Perhaps in this regard, I have already self-defeated… uhh, myself (realized how redundant that was, but it didn’t sound right without the redundancy). I just hold the belief that I can win this battle with a different approach.

How does one even reach a state of arrogance? I guess you’d have to take a step back first. Our society is obsessed with confidence, so I can only speak with true fluency in one culture, but in what little bits I know of sociology, psychology and more importantly, history, it seems that it is human nature to be drawn towards confidence. For whatever reason, we get concocted, cooked up and baked until we come out as these little baby things, then at some point, as we are developing the idea of natural desires on a sociopsychological level we are able to identify the ones who exude this abstract idea of confidence. Ok, actually I probably got some of that reversed. We see traits we like which have some sort of correlation to a confident individual, and at some point, assuming we fully develop our ability for abstract thought, we package it all together and realize that is what confidence in oneself is. Of course, when you look at it that way, it is apparent that confidence is easy to feign, because you only have to learn to emulate the parts that everyone else sees, while you can be a ruptured murder scene on the inside. I’d like to think that we all have done this or learned to do this on a basic level. I know that in the past I did it quite a lot, but I have trouble sustaining it.

We all want a champion to like. Look at some of the heroes of our time, the world adored Michael Jordan because he won and won, or Michael Jackson because he was a full-realization of his talents; they were “the best”. Ironically, when I was growing up I remember feeling disdain towards each of these men. I was sick of Michael Jordan always winning and didn’t think it was possible to quantify any man the best at anything. Michael Jackson certainly wasn’t making the songs that I loved the most, so how could he truly be king of anything? These were my thought processes as a kid, and while I eventually came to respect and appreciate the talents, abilities and accomplishments these two men brought, I never really shook the general unease toward someone who has everyone reason to be as arrogant as Alexander the Great heading into India after conquering the rest of his known world while making it look easy. Don’t misinterpret, I didn’t say that I have an unease for people who are arrogant, but that unease stretches out to people who should have some reason to be, even if they are the personification of humility and public service. In this light, you can go ahead and multiply my feelings on people who actually are over-confident. I have no doubts that this negative sentiment bleeds into general confidence. I think most people would agree that arrogant bastards are just that, arrogant bastards. They might even entertain us and amuse us from distance, why else do we celebrate legendary athletes and personalities such as Ali, Tyson or my personal favorite, The Football Player Formerly Known as Ochocinco? But I promise you this, none of us (and when I say none of us, I mean anyone sane or who’s mother didn’t do hard drugs during pregnancy) would want to regularly spend time in the same room with a person like that. There are different tolerances, but arrogance and pride grate me down to my last, brittle strands faster than about anything else I can think of off the top of my head. I just see the delusion that these people have, how overtly inaccurate they are with their assessment of themselves, the people they are immediately around and the entire population of the past, present and future.

Given that, I can confidently (arrogance!) say that my sense of humility can’t be false, because I am constantly aware that there has to be someone better than me in every possible facet, that there were in the past and will be in the future. More importantly, that, once again, good, better, best can’t be quantified. In my head I have some BS general score that I just estimate in my head, it usually comes out as a percentage for some reason. I’ve never actually thought a literal number though, I just think about myself and person X or Y and I feel this idea of this percentage. What do they do well? What were they born with? What kind of person are they? Etc. — there are countless questions that I fill in the blanks to, because I don’t do most of this consciously, I am able to do practically in an instant– after all this compounded processing and deliberation I feel this fictitious numerical percentage, so I have no idea what any actual ‘scores’ might be, I just feel one is greater than the other. I almost always feel my score is higher. Of course, the fact that I just eventually leave it up to feeling and trick myself into thinking it is some sort of percentage or score probably leads to this typical result, because at that point I don’t actually have to trust any weighing of things you can’t really quantify anyway, I just have to trust in myself.

Thing is, I really do have this inflated sense of self-worth though. I know all sorts of talented people, all sorts of hard workers, all sorts of people who are actually producing tangible results to whatever they are doing– putting themselves out there, yet here I am, and I just can’t help but feel like I’ve got something(s)– usually plural– that they don’t. If I leave it at that, then I am correct, because of the infinite differences provided via individuality, but I guess I am taking it too far and believing that my individuality doesn’t just bring something different, but something more. There could be a few brisk and rare truths to this notion, but overall, even I know thinking that something is right because it is my way is silly.

Am I totally unfounded though?

I think not?

Why?

Constant digestion.

I know know know that I am at least highly competent in many things. I can see places that I think are highly vulnerable to arrogance seeping in. For general example, friends I have, or even just acquaintances who spend years studying and specifically focus on doing things that I don’t pursue with that level of prioritized dedication, yet I do these things ‘on the side’ or on my own time at least, and I can on a level of some objectivity compare ability and at the least say it is on the relative level. I won’t lie, I usually feel like my capability exceeds the others pretty often, but will also be the first person to appreciate someone’s clearly recognizable talent and skill, it is a unique balance to say the least.

Let me get more specific, for once. Let’s start with something that most people clearly know about me. Filmmaking. Ironically, I don’t feel like I’ve truly gotten into filmmaking yet, but merely have done most aspects of it a few at a time. With that said, I watch a ton of movies and think to myself, “I could have pulled that off better.” Rarely am I thinking about it from something like the technical standpoint. The technicality of anything is usually the easiest part. In pure technique, I am far from the best in anything related to making movies, I am competent enough in the major things to get by pretty well if I really devoted all my time and energy to a big project, but the good news is that like most things, filmmaking is a collaborative process; a highly collaborative project. So if you gave me a budget, full crew and resources on a level of even a tight budget independent film (because they are basically majors with a very low budget) then there certainly would be no issues in the technicality of it. It’d look and feel like a professionally produced movie. It is on the substance that I feel like I can bring something substantial. I’m familiar enough with every aspect of actually making the damn thing, so it is largely a decision making different from there.

Another example: I have known a lot of people who do have the technical idea of the whole thing down well, but they are completely ruled by it. Like at an, “oh here’s this scene, get it well lit, make sure the lighting is even, knock out a wide shot, a 2-shot or so and close-ups and move on to the next scene, oh and we’ll throw in a cut away to some random action because that’ll look nice and show importance.” That isn’t real decision making, that is letting what is known to be technically correct make the decisions for you. So what if I break the line of action? Maybe that is the freakin point, to be disorienting and make the viewer feel uneasy? Or lighting choices that help to convey a mood or emotion, or taking more risks, cinematographically speaking, than just a few nice looking, yet bland and basic shots. There comes a point in any person’s ability and level of skill that they understand the textbook basics well enough that they can consciously make decisions that effectively put their own intent on the outcome, especially with something like any form of motion picture. Obviously, I am not where I will be 1, 5, 10 years from now, but I have gotten to the point where my grasp is strong enough to where I am now consciously making decisions that convey certain things beyond the idea of just trying to tell a story or conveying a few emotions. I’d say it is even beyond things such as intentionally misdirecting the viewer,  doing something visually complex/cool without coupling it with knowing what effect I’m wanting it to have —

(having trouble explaining what I mean on this one, so I’ll throw in a quick, very dirty example: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the famous tracking shot of Danny on his big wheel, at his eye level. Seen multiple times in the film, besides being a cool shot, initially used to give us a look from this little kid’s perspective. How vast, complex and intimidating this huge, lonely hotel is. It is just like the time I got lost in the grocery store when I was 4 or 5, it isn’t this huge labyrinth to me anymore, but back then it was intimidating, infinitely confusing and away from the confines of my mother, terrifying. Of course he then builds it into a suspense factor later on and eventually uses it to set-up one of the most iconic and chilling scenes cinema has known, etc. Of course, with Kubrick, he was using this shot and repeating it on more levels than just the overt reasoning I have mentioned, which further exemplifies my point of using style for substance; multiple layers of substance.)

Definitely isn’t on that Kubrick level, or even just other very very good directors, but my point is that I understand the importance of decisions, I have a lot of ideas for how to convey all sorts of abstractions while still maintaining a standard narrative structure and so on. Ideas for directing actors beyond saying, “ok we have this scene and these lines or whatever, be angry, action,” then doing it over and over trying different kinds of angry (over simplifying everything here, shut up if you missed that part), and so on. I didn’t go to film school or anything, but I know that I am on a proficient enough technical level to be at the point where if I really set out to make something, I’m relying on the decision making in all phases of production to make something unique, as opposed to just drumming up a script and shooting, editing doing everything on a pretty simple level, which is what most of the stuff you watch is, just that basic formulaic level. Substance is what really matters in my weight of where someone is when it comes to filmmaking. For instance, I hate Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. HATE IT– but there is so much substance in that movie. I watch it and I instantly understand how much thought went into every scene, every shot, every line uttered. Every. Single. Thing. You hear. Or see. It isn’t a movie, it is experiencing something that the director created, followed by the writer(s), actors, crew, and everyone else.

You could give the premise and basic structure of a movie like that to 25 people who work with videography, film, something related. 15 people will give you something that follows your typical 3-act narrative formula, it could be pretty entertaining, engaging at times, will predominantly be standardly shot, with a few stylistic overtones, that could convey a different genre or other easy to blanket stylistic choices such as color grading, but it wouldn’t be much more than standard and wouldn’t explore the territory very much. 5 people will give you something that is just bad, maybe the writing is just completely broken, or the characters make no sense and serve little purpose outside of protagonist, love interest, antagonist, human plot device, etc., or just failed to cover the basic aesthetic needs, or had terrible audio and so on, just crap. Finally, 5 of those 25 will give you something that covers all those basic aesthetic needs in terms of the writing, visuals, audio and so on, but will also fill you until your mind, your eyes and your ears can consume no more, so that each time you go back, you get a new meal altogether. It might not fit your particular tastes, maybe it offends you, maybe it enriches your mind, maybe you find it a little weird, maybe it leads to a breakthrough in your life, but the point is, you watch it and know that there was just something more, there was decision making that created something substantial. 2 or 3 out of these 5 brought something like that to the table in one or two aspects, maybe the performances they drew out of their actors combined with really exploring the characters, maybe on the audio-visual level of spectacle, something that just tickles your mind on that aesthetic level. 1, maybe 2 of these 5 manage to hit with all this substance in nearly every area– the prodigy’s.

First off, this was a freakin talented group of 25 with the numbers I was giving, but I think the example is served. With the well-known enough people to have gotten major distribution, out of ten, 1-3 are the ones who produced total crap, 3-8 of them are the ones who were good but didn’t really manage to infuse the human soul into the work, and 1-2 fall into the “really talented” category. Though I have yet to complete, much less start a project that demonstrates the following, but I firmly believe myself to be in those exceptional 5 in the example; someone who can infuse part of his own soul in the work. I firmly and unshakably believe that. Given that look at it, is it any wonder why I feel so arrogant?

Remember, digestion? It was my curriculum. Continually versing myself in the basics and technically correct aspect of things, enough to solidify my general ability, while continually gaining experience as me and the crew I work with try and focus on different small things– those are the works of the swb crew– micro experiments that hopefully entertain a little at the same time, then finally absorbing as much as I can simply by watching and experiencing other works, good and bad. With the stuff I really come to admire or look up to, I consume, I gluttonize my brain into a blob of fatty mass that has grafted into his stained, soiled polyester couch with floral patterns, then I slowly process it and digest it. The end result of the digestion is a further molding of influence via what I have mentally digested, as well as an infusion of new ideas and concepts to toy with. That is my course of study. It isn’t a degree that certifies me an expert, but it is likely more valuable than that in terms of capabilities. I imagine it is the same type of curriculum that best suited your Tarantinos or Rodriguezes of the world. A little bit of technical knowledge as your ironing board, combining it with experience to really get the important stuff as an iron. There is your technical mastery to work on, the mechanics, both arms in coordination. Then osmosis of your influences or things you admire or even detest, that is the article of clothing you’re ironing. God-given talent plays only a small factor in these things, because these are things that develop, so even if you have a natural eye for cinematography, your lifelong development of it will be infinitely greater than whatever you started with.

Combining talent with development. I think that would actually be something I consider to be a talent in itself, which I think I possess. More small examples: basketball – I was blessed with good genes in the sense that I have a lot of athletic talent. I naturally can jump higher than average, which also correlated with quickness and speed. I would consider that to fall in a trait that is talent-dominant as far as basketball (or most sports) would go. But I can also improve it, and I have in the past. If I lifted weights more, ate better, consistently did plyometric exercises and so on, I have a much more impressive ceiling in terms of just my leg output than where I am at. I don’t though. There is also the entire skill aspect. Jumpshots aren’t something anyone is born with. The way your brain is wired to move your body might play a large role in how easily someone can develop those specific motor skills, but I know how many hours I have put into all the specific skills involved in being a versatile player at my position. Once again, back to the confidence factor, I think that if I had continued to keep the mindset I had when I was younger all throughout high school, I could have easily played in college somewhere. I had plenty on the talent level, but I worked even harder than that. All those years going up to the gym 4, 5 times a week and just shooting, or practicing one thing: coming off of screens, ball handling, runners, left hand, the list never ends. Even then, I cut myself short on the development part by never sustaining a consistent weightlifting regimen. But I absolutely know, on pure skills and natural ability, I can hang with most players that step foot on a court, and there are tons and tons of great basketball players in the world, guys who played college, professionally on any level, guys who had a rough upbringing that killed their careers, or guys who just developed as a player far too late to have a shot at even playing in college, I just know that as long as I work at it, and especially if I dedicated hard time to improving more, I am just a really freakin good basketball player despite all my shortcomings.

That’s simply an arrogant sounding thing to say, but I believe it to be true.

We circle back to the other part of my personality though, the humility part, I never would want to come off as the player I believe myself to be. That confidence I so despised has always limited me. Even if it just means putting myself out there, trying to get on certain teams or whatever, all the way to how I actually perform on the court. If I look at it as objectively as I can, I know that I am going to either be one of the better players, or at least be able to hang as it gets higher and higher in the upper echelons of skill, but even as if I am performing in a manner that correlates this, proves it to be fact, I trick myself into not believing it, because the modesty that is so deeply engraved in me has a knee jerk reaction to the affirmation of my confidence. I know it was a really long time ago, but we arrive at the paradox once again. I’m the living contradiction. Even in something primitive and largely instinctual as playing basketball, every single thing I do is a self-contradiction, as I do it and think it. How is anyone supposed to sustain a high level of performance with pulsing confidence levels? Because as soon as you have the confidence downswing at the wrong moment, the peak of the confidence filled moments decrease, thus starts the cycle which whittles me down to nothing more than a pitiful creature.

So there it is, if you see me in public and have read this, you can watch me and think to yourself, “So everything he is saying or doing is the muffled result of some internal struggle,” as I battle my over politness with my over confidence. Of course, you should also take it to the next level and thing, “man, he is so gentle and soft-spoken like a young Ghandi, but I see it now, that man is a badass.”

I’m going to end this post here, because I didn’t expect it to be so long, but this has officially become a two parter, because I have a closely related 4.5 of ? that I need to tackle as a solo entity, then I’ll tie them together, and hopefully maybe ascertain some greater understanding of myself. That way I can make myself better, cause I’m self obsessed like that, you know?!

I beg your pardon, but I apologize if I come off as offensive or arrogant when I say, I AM AWESOME. I’m kidding, of course. (But now you know I’m not)

Goodbye for now. (4436)

Ok, I’ve wanted to do this one for a while now, but other things got in the way. Throw in having to move all of our web stuff over to a new host and playing in MySQL for a couple hours and by the time I am able to actually get to something, it has passed me by. I’m hoping I can take some sort of brain laxative on this one and force it out though.

I’ve really had a lot of thoughts and feelings on depression and anxiety. For one, I’ve been ‘suffering’ from depression for months now, maybe even a year. It’s not something I’m proud of. You won’t see me hopping from rooftop to rooftop, sliding down the chimney of unsuspecting families with my neo-70’s dance crew and doing a laser light show number where I proclaim that I am depressed. I’m not ashamed either, though.

The fact of the matter is that it is, well, was it is. Too much is to handle? I’m only getting started. I don’t know if it really is a modern phenomenon, or a more culturally prevalent one for us (speaking as current day Americans) to suffer from depression in almost cyclical phases of our lives, but people would seem to lead you to think that. I, for one, almost suspect that we are just a society that has such an attitude and way of handling things that it is more likely for these phases to surface and so on, but I’m not making any sort of official claim on that, I’m familiar with research on these things that would probably argue me to the core of the Earth. What I’m getting at though, is that this is something I personally have gotten used to. I don’t spend most of my life battling depression or anything, but occasionally things in my life orbit around in a way that leads to things aligning in a manner that leads to me ending up depressed– assuming these eclipses last long enough. In that regard, I’m prepared for these seasons to fall upon me, and the time experienced through the previous ones are just experiences I use to make the next dark age a more positive thing– something that I can grow more out of.

I guess that would have to be my first thought on all of it. It’s like there is this idea that falling into any level of depression is something to be avoided at all costs; like lava or spikes in any video game– game over. At least, I know I’ve fallen under that line of thinking before, holding some sort of mentality that I’m too tough to be sad over nothing, or that my life is too good to always be down, or that I don’t want people to think there is something wrong with me. Life just isn’t that simple, though. And before I go any further, I am not saying that cases of severe chronic depression isn’t something serious and often requires some form of council and even medication, but this is not what I’m talking about at all, I’m just talking about the human experience. I fall in and out of communication with a lot of my close friends, so sometimes it is hard to keep up, but even given the statistical drop offs, a number of my good friends have gone through similar down periods in recent months. I can’t say that I’ve seen a notably different story with any of them. Just getting to the point where I know they are depressed takes me practically beating it out of them sometimes, or bluntly saying to them, “Hey, so I guess I’ve been pretty depressed these days…,” and I can’t imagine what its like for the lesser classes of friends and colleagues. This paragraph has been drivel thus far, but it necessitates a question that I’ve often tried to work out: why do we live under such conditions in almost a level of secrecy?

Is it because we don’t want people to think there is something wrong with us? Or maybe even be worried? Or is it more like we don’t want people to not care? In the many elements of truth, I almost think that the prospect of people not caring, getting fed up with some a miserable, pitiful, helpless creature and distancing their lives as far away as possible from the dysfunctional. And maybe this isn’t even the case, but from the view of ‘the dysfunctional’ I think this is the more likely angle of perception.

There are further possibilities that come into play. Do we want to avoid being that one person who just wallows and virtually cries out to the world as much as possible, as if to come off as some attention whoring brat who just wants people to spend their time and energy on them? Do we just want to avoid being perceived as that, even if it is the antithesis of the truth? Or maybe, do we even secretly want that kind of attention without having to work for it, even if we would never admit it to ourselves? I think in this case, I am bordering a lot on common questions that tend to go through the minds of an average person, but I’d think that if you’re depressed, the intensity of this is even greater. I should say this right now, the first time I ever really went through some real level of depression (I was 18 or 19, though you could make a case for me at 14-15, but that was different, I believe) I was this stereotypical case. I had this mindset that I wanted people to know I was depressed because people should care, hell, it might even be their fault I am. Misery loves company, right? I completely shut myself down. I had no drive to do anything, the only thing that seemed to feel good was the lay down.. by myself.. in my room.. preferably in the dark and feel sad, actually more like pitiful. I felt pitiful so I could pity myself. Someone had to do it right?

I have my days still, those days where you don’t even think a rock would let you hide under it. Even so, I guess that would be a lot of what I learned the most in that first bout with depression. People can think whatever they like, but you have to take care of yourself first. You know this analogy, if the plane is going down, put on your oxygen mask before you think about anybody else. I guess that is hard when you’re having to go out and be, you know, a person, especially on those really low days. It’s like being bubbled up with anxiety and the slightest movement or outside pressure and the whole thing just gets expulsed out in this big sinewy mess of guts and rotted feelings. To not care what anybody might think about you, even if it is in the most indirect, irrelevant manner is a gift that is reserved for savants and the like, and to be expected to win that battle of man vs. self in a state of anxiety-filled depression probably lead to the most laughable point spread since Alabama played newly christened Georgia State.

Anyway, at least I’m not sheepish about it, even if I don’t have the rest of it down quite right yet. That is the interesting thing about customs. Why do we always ask how people are doing as a formality, it basically sends the message that we don’t care. When I’m really not alright, at the least I try to say, “You don’t want me to answer that,” almost as a way of politely saying that I’m doing pretty crappy. I know I can’t go around door-to-door and let everyone know this but, if you spend the time to read this you can learn this about me:

If I ask how you are doing, I really want to know. So if you are really intending on getting into a conversation with me, then answer it as extensively as you like. I guess it is another cultural thing that I’m sick of. Well, actually, formal anything comes off as a waste of time to me, and time is something we’re always losing.

Finally circling things back fully to myself, it is funny how things work out. After spending about 3 years with the girl of my dreams, and the dream to end all dreams, and now having that part of my life filled with a huge void, you’d think I’d be even more down. The funny thing is, I think I’ve actually gained a lot of altitude instead. Not because that removal from each others life isn’t something that makes me really sad, but all the other things that got me down seem to be losing their stranglehold on me. Though on the days where it all brings me down, well yeah, those can be rough, but so can any other day, if things decide to favor the tragic.

So yeah, I don’t mind saying it again, I’m depressed. I have been under this spell for quite a while now, but a long time ago I realized that there is no good done letting that affect the rest of my life. So you will likely see me smiling or laughing, or at least trying to have a good time, or just doing stuff and never have any idea how I feel in the larger scope of things, because you know what? The two don’t necessarily have to be partners. Life is beautiful, even when its all grays.

Hmm, I don’t know if any mental laxative could have gotten that out well, but at least its out of my system.

You are going to have to excuse a few paragraphs that will likely come off as narcissistic– I don’t care for it either, but I need the context before I really get into my thoughts.

—- self-indulgent context starts here —-

I feel like I’ve developed some sort of conversational problem, or a misalignment of conversational etiquette in all its various forms. I am pretty sure that a lot of this has to do with how communication has developed as a result of rapid technological permeation,  and how my high level of involvement within the technological sphere.

There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to communicating with me. For one, are you simply trying  to reach me? If you know me pretty well or are in a stage when you are getting to know me, then one of the first things you’ll learn about me is that I hate talking on the phone. I could draw up all sorts of cute little analogies or similes to express how much I hate talking on the phone, but that is giving it more time than it is worth. I just don’t like it. The physical requirements of it– even any sort of hands free setup sucks. I’m like an iPhone or an iPad when it comes to multi-tasking, I just can’t do it. So for me, talking on the phone requires full concentration. So basically, it is forcing myself in a situation where I have to drop every single thing I am doing and focus on a conversation that I can probably have more efficiently. Before anyone starts thinking that I am sounding a bit inhuman or impersonal about this, let’s just consider a couple points: one, the phone is not a good medium for an in-depth conversation. Obviously, talking to someone in person is unrivaled, but I even find other means, such as maybe a video chat sort of set-up isn’t so bad (but it is kind of foreign, even for me, so I don’t really use it for that) and furthermore, some sort of text format, whether it is just sending messages or e-mails or an instant messaging sort of scheme. There is a lot less static and interference in both regards. When you talk with someone in person, you have the complete communication toolset at your disposal. Even in a really distracting or noisy environment, this blows the phone out of the water. A phone call to me is about 45% repeating things, 45% me asking someone to repeat what they said and 5% original material.

Now there is the textual element of communication that I cited as being superior to the phone. You lose some-up-to-a-lot of the immediacy, as well as the ability to communicate non-verbally (though as a population, we really have gotten quite good at using ’emoticons’ and other similar non-verbal expressive devices, even if it is still infinitely distant from the amount we communicate by expressing ourselves in our body and face language), but you gain a lot in your ability to carefully construct a thought. Now, if the extent of your textual travails tends to look like this, “hey. i c-n u @ park place. y were u ther?” — then this probably isn’t going to be applicable, but I tend to have a lot more faith in ourselves as communicators than that. This whole concept of a well-constructed thought goes a long way. For one, if I’m speaking, it gets old if I am constantly stumbling and fumbling around my words because I can’t quite word it properly– or if I need long pauses to get things worded just right. It also isn’t as necessary, because you get to volley around with people in a conversation and the completion of the thought via a collaborative thought process tends to happen rather rapidly. When I am typing or writing to someone, every word can have as much weight as I want it to, and this is something that I think tends to get taken for granted. Furthermore, these thoughts and word conglomerates are instantly archived. I find that it isn’t so much that I can always infallibly interpret what someone is trying to say or express as a complex thought or emotion, because stuff always gets lost in translation, per se, but it does allow me to really understand how well I get what someone is saying when I am talking to them. Maybe at first I think I get it completely, but then I mull over it some more and realize that I could very likely be completely misinterpreting how this person actually feels or what they are thinking about a specific thing, especially when their frame of reference for something is much greater than my frame of reference of a particular thing. This naturally makes me a much more inquisitive person in text-based communication than I am in speech. In fact, the last time I asked a question vocally was when I worked at a cafe when I was 17.

“Can I take your order?” — or something to that effect.

Pulling away from the merits of written communication and back to my initial point, the phone just doesn’t cut it for me. I treat it as a last resort, so obviously, if you are trying to reach me, the phone is the worst way possible. The second major consideration in communicating with myself is for what purpose is it? Is there some sort of goal or directive to it? I think it is gotten to be pretty well-accepted (as a whole, I mean) that most of the time, text messaging is the best method for this. For that, I’m glad. I also appreciate the redundancy of it. For instance, do you have a goal of wanting to talk to me? Fine, but text me and let me know first. When I think about it, this is entirely impractical and far from the most logical, though I tend to favor these types of thought processes anyway, and I think a lot of the way I’ve done things in life tend to seek this type of unnecessary unorthodoxy. With that said, there are some practical merits to it also. I mean, sometimes we might not be well-equipped to call someone and talk, or really any sort of scenario where either you or the other person seeks a very strong communication platform, but because of the desirability or necessity of it, the things in the way can be re-aligned, thus making yourself more available to talk. I guess I’ll go ahead and try to make an example and break it down anyway.

Them: wuts up?

Me: Nothing really <– obviously not true, it could mean anything. Perhaps I am in a plan, thousands of feet in the air, about to jump and instead of ensuring (for the 50th time) that my parachute is good to go, I am texting you. Therefore, I am a rebel because my phone is on in an aircraft, and if I die its on you, but anyway, the point is that it denotes a willingness to talk. If I didn’t feel like communicating at that point, I’d really just say what I’m doing. “Hey, performing open heart surgery atm, will talk later.”  I think that pretty much everyone understands this system to some degree. Also, let me point out how much better my texting grammar is compared to yours. My grammar, at all times, is nearly impeccable. I rule.

Them: cool, u busy?  <– notice this person gets it. Nothing means nothing, and who knows what I’m really doing, but they got the green light to get to the point. They could have just gotten to the point in this text, but it is pushed out another cycle because they are likely intimidated by me, or were hoping that by stretching out the texting cycle one more time that maybe I’d flatter them.

Me: Not really, I am in the middle of my descent. Went skydiving today hehe! About to go into parachute mode, mc hammer, too legit to quit you know? What’s up?  <– somewhat busy at the moment, but tons of availability as soon as this is out of the way. The system works! Also, I contemplated flattering them, but instead opted for the mc hammer quip. For one, that song rules. Two, they didn’t earn my smooth words.

Them: lol, awesome. well I tried 2 perform open heart surgry on me. I think i mest up, can u cum help?

Me: Sure dude, I’ll head over in about an hour or so if that works for you?  <– at this point this part of the cycle is self-explanatory, and from this point the objective-based act of communication is complete. Casually interact from this point at each other’s own discretion.

The text message is so powerful because it is quick, discreet/unobstrusive and addictive. It works, whether there is a purpose behind it, or if you are just shooting the breeze.

I could continue breaking things down relative to the means of communication that I favor, but I already touched on them, so it is safe to assume that, as a whole, the best ways to reach me tend to be digital.

—- self-indulgent context ends here —-

Essentially, this is what has happened between myself and most people that I know:

My primary modes of communication have a type of incompatibility with the average person. In some ways, it feels like I am the mysterious old wizard. To the outside world it looks like I’ve become a batty hermit and shelled myself up in some unreachable tower atop an unscalable mountain– or maybe I’m just more like the guy who went crazy, started running around in a chicken costume and is hiding out somewhere in some dark, secluded, nasty cave, sleeping my life away in a puddle of my own drool.

If I follow this trail of communicative seclusion even further, it makes it even harder to manifest myself “in the real world”. See, what happens when you get cut off from everyone is that nobody hears from you and you hear from nobody (simultaneously). Then you get back catalogued in their mind and thoughts– this also happens to people you know, at with I would say is a pseudo-random involuntary selection process. Once becoming out of contact and out of mind, then you increasingly become out of sight. Therefore, your opportunities to ‘manifest yourself in the real world’ become limited by the things which require you to.. you guessed it, manifest yourself in the real world. If that dwindles, well then you really have a problem on your hands.

In such a limited existence, everything becomes a guess. “Oh, maybe I’ll shoot so-so a text and see what they’re up to,” a pause occurs, thought happens, their offspring is hesitation, hesitation is asexual and adopts the outcome, a guess, “Well, maybe not, they seem like they’ve been really busy lately, I’ll just wait til things open up for them or if they hit me up.”

You can pull out scenario after scenario ad infinitum at this juncture, because you just don’t know, it really is just a guessing game. I don’t have empirical evidence on this, nor do I feel like trying to find any right now, but I’d say that there is certainly a strong inverse correlation between the confidence in our guesses and assumptions and our level of doubt and lack of self-confidence. I’d also say that this is likely how the internet-age phenomenon of the digital community and even on-line subculture ascended to such prominence. People, like myself, get promulgated into a crowd of like-minded individuals, or rather, we congregate as a result of how we communicate and interact. It is probably what led to the stereotype of the lonely basement nerd. Only very–very–very unique people are going to prefer purely impersonal and disconnected forms of communication and interaction to actually doing something, you know, like in the same physical location with actual physical people. Allow me to speak as an introvert, there are plenty of times where I’d much rather hole up and recharge doing something to myself for a while, but even being my heavily introverted self, more often than not I will take any opportunity to go do something with people– even if I’d prefer to recharge. Getting me time is something that I can get almost anytime I want it, all it takes is free time and I can make it happen. Spending time with friends or whoever, well that is not as selfish as an act, thus requiring a lot more to line-up, hence why even introverts like myself will almost always opt to do something that might drain them a bit more than they’re used to.

Haha, it seems that I somehow also highlighted how someone who has a similar communication set-up as myself can become physically removed and disassociated from people, but my goal has been to highlight how I feel a disconnect on a basic-interactive level. So I must continue.

Setting this element of physicality or ‘real-world manifestation’ (which is really just a phrase I use because I like how impersonal it comes off) aside, the thing I have really experienced is a mental disconnect.

There was a time when my ‘text messaging game’ would frighten even a 14 year old MTV-generated girl, but those days have long since passed. Today, it has a decent pulse, but it really isn’t the casual conversational device it once was. I’d say that it is still primarily used for that, but it is more Ent-like. A friend and I might start a jovial train of thought, playing some sort of tiny, humorous made-up game, but instead of it taking a couple of minutes, like it used to, it’ll take a day or two to get passed that gap. By the time it is done, there is another stray thought that one of us mentions and thus a very small topic is chatted on in the same period of time, and that is how the cycle revolves. In person, I just don’t see people in many settings that are conducive to just talking about whatever to anyone. There aren’t many people I regularly hang out with these days (something perhaps to get into another time), and besides that, what other settings are there really? Most of the time I see someone, I am going to point A, they are going to point B, that leaves, on average, 7.8 seconds to get a few words in. I will say this, a lot of people I know (as well as myself) are very very good 7.8 second conversationalists. There is no choice but to be. I don’t work, so I can’t comment on that, but in school settings, it has always been go to class, take notes, pay attention and be bored, then get out. Vastly different from how it was in high school and below, where you are boxed in with the same people every day for hours and hours. A lot of other instances just have a lot of noise or interference in the way. The gym is a great example, because when I go play basketball it is the most lax and recreational thing I do on a regular basis. I mean, it really is just something I do out of pure enjoyment more than anything else, and there is the gym-culture, you tend to get to know everyone pretty well at least on the level that you know their gym-self, but even then, I don’t think you could really expect too much beyond it anyway, because some of my longest-standing best friends and I will go to the gym and talk very sparsely over the course of a couple of hours— because really, it just ain’t that great of a place to talk to somebody. It’s loud, distracting, the acoustics suck– so whenever you forget these facts and actually get into any substantial sort of conversation, you are almost immediately reminded that it is going to be more of a hassle than anything else; the worst instance of this being when you realize you’re actually playing a game, and you get too chatty with the person you’re guarding.

In some ways, it makes me feel like a little kid, because the best option for a decent conversation, whether casual or in-depth, with anyone at any given time is similar to how it was in my younger days. Instead of AOL Instant Messenger, I’m just using Skype and Facebook instead. Now, not getting back into them again, there are plenty of things going against this already, such as the ways people tend to communicate– not a whole lot of people are in to using these means, so that already limits the variety and selection. Furthermore, and also really to the core of what I initially was getting at, it is just hard to connect there. See, for one, it comes back to the alignment issue. For many, people are strictly using these sort of things for objective-based communication.

“Hey do you want to get some people together when I come into town?”

“You bet”

“Cool, see ya”

This is where I notice the disconnect the most. In my head, I’m thinking, “derrn man, I haven’t talked to them–like really talked to them– in (imitating Squints from The Sandlot) FOR-EV-ERR,” then I just feel like I am cheating someone, them, myself, I don’t know who, by just saying, “see ya.” Of course, I realize and accept that I have to. Either my hand is played because they log off before I can even type something like, “cool, cool, was good to hear from you and hope you’re doing well. Look forward to seeing you and everybody. Later!” — or because it just feels like I am violating some sort of unspoken code or etiquette of it all. Lord knows I wouldn’t want to do that! Or.. well.. for some reason in my head that is how I perceive it. As a result, a lot of the times I have any sort of interaction with people on these things, it just feels awkward.

WAIT

I just admitted to something like that resulting in an awkward conversation? Well, I guess that it is really more because when you just don’t have a good talk with anyone for a long time, you really have no idea what is going through that person’s head. You don’t have any clue where they are in life at the moment. You don’t really even know them anymore, for that matter. Once again, it is the guess confidence to doubt inverse correlation. You know nothing, therefore I doubt every aspect of my interaction with you. Of course, remember that when I say ‘you’ right now, it pretty much always interchanges into, “I” or “me”.

I think that is the shame of it all. I think back on times, there are few things I remember as well as a really good conversation. This doesn’t even mean I have to remember the conversation with any specificity, but it may just be remembering that it was there, and as a result I had a really close connection and interaction with someone, and that is just cool. Also, the thing with it all is that it doesn’t require some sort of best-friendship blood-brotha type of oath relationship with someone to have that. I have friends who have always just hovered above the acquaintance line the entire time I’ve known who I have fond memories of times where we just had a really good discussion on something.

I don’t really know where this leads to from this point of realization, admittance and acceptance I am at with this whole disconnect thing, but I suppose that isn’t the point anyway. To sum it all up, I really think I am just lamenting the fact that through a lot of small developments and misalignment of interactivity, I find myself missing things such as being able to chat with any random Jane or John Doe that I know.

You know, one of those things in life that you end up taking for granted. I’ve got at least a few of those.

Note: I really had to stretch to try and fit the word ‘promulgate’ in where I did, and I’m sure I didn’t nail its use at all, but I just had to use it. It was a calling, or actually, worse, an itch. Also, I think I ended up doing some weird stuff with my pronoun usage that I am not going to go back and fix for a day or two, because I just typed 3500 words, I owe myself by not having to re-read my own thoughts.