Thom has been kind enough to put up with me through one of my self-analysis days, which I am always grateful for because I know I can get tiresome when I self-analyze out loud, and I've been coming up with some interesting things.

I think that I never learned to cope with failure. Sounds simple enough, I know, but it's a bit of a breakthrough for me. Some early things make so much more sense now. I think I may be able to make some real personal progress now that I've consciously realized this. So there's that.

I also think that I have not integrated some of the pieces of my personality together very well, if at all. I have been tacking on all kinds of other associations like "competitive", "cold", and "egomaniacal" to a side of myself that those labels don't describe, just because when I got into that headspace before there were times when I would behave poorly. Just regaining a little bit of my analytical, intellectual, "smart" side isn't automatically going to make me make the same mistakes I did before. I need to realize that the current system of equally opposed extremes (ie: mania-induced superiority/ego complex and the depression-induced corresponding total loss of self-respect and tidal wave of self-recrimination that follow realizing that I was actually just making an ass of myself) is not actually balance. Balance is constant checks on ego and judge both while maintaining a steady, and likely far more productive, course. Balance is not oscillation...that's equilibrium, if it's stable.

Another thing is that I avoid change like crazy, which is silly because I love change. I love it after it has begun. I don't like transitions, though, and I avoid them to the point of extreme neurosis. I don't yet understand why I have such a hard time simply picking up and doing things that I need to do, but I have sort of gone backwards in this department. I used to be better about it. Depression helped, oddly enough. Certain types of depression anyway. It seems like I'm going through far too much of my life trying to avoid notice, trying to keep my head down or something. Ridiculous.

I spend too much thought on "Why am I different?". Not the song by Aimee Mann. It's a pointless why/how. It doesn't matter, for the most part, and I have the answers really. I didn't realize I was still subconsciously asking myself this when I had resolved it consciously a while back.

And that's a lot of it, right there. I have intellectually and rationally resolved a lot of things that used to bother me a lot, but I never sent the memo to my subconscious. When I am faced with new challenges, I begin to ask all these old questions and fling all these old blames, even telling myself that I'm doing a good thing by doing it in some cases, but I'm not. Crippling myself psychologically is not doing anyone else any good, nor is it doing me any good. I am perfectly capable of being confident in myself without falling prey to ego traps, as least as much as the next guy. I don't need a war inside my head, particularly not battles being fought after the war is over, like those civil war guys. My life, and I, have moved on, it is time the rest of me got with the program.

I will leave you with a little psychological zen koan, for you to do your own self-analysis if you find it useful:

What are you afraid of? Why?