And It Must Follow

Two years into my biggest attempt at a resolution I'm feeling like the world's biggest failure.  And frankly, writing this isn't helping.  Perhaps I'm too much of a stats junkie, but it's just depressing to watch the number of views and comments your blog gets slowly plummet, and to have the numbers right before you to verify it's not just in your head.  And considering the fact that my blog has been more popular in Russia and Sweden than in the US lately, I can only assume that very few people I actually know will ever read this . . . but perhaps strangers can offer me better advice.  Because heaven knows, when it appears that even one's grandparents have stopped reading one's blog, one must be doing something horribly wrong.

And I can only assume that the whole "be myself" thing was horribly wrong in my case.  Apparently when I do that what people see is not actually me (at least, what I would recognize as me) but an emo teenager.  Which doesn't make a lot of sense, since I wasn't exactly emo even when I was a teenager.  I don't understand it, and I can't find an explanation.  All I know is that for the better part of last year I was trying to balance being myself with being someone who doesn't accidentally alienate people without even knowing how I'd been alienating them in the first place.  It probably won't surprise anyone, but I couldn't do it.  It was bewildering . . . torturous.  Months of second-guessing everything I did, said, or thought, and in the end I was more lost than I had been to start with.

I thought this sort of confusion was supposed to . . . just . . . I don't know, evaporate as a person got older.  You know who you are, you get to know other people - so you relate to them.  You can interact and be friends.  Successfully.  Except not me, apparently.  When does the part where you start feeling like an adult start?  Because right now I feel like the ten-year-old trying to blend in at the grown-up table.  I know I'm doing it wrong, and I can see that it's so easy for everyone else at the table - but something is just not connecting.  And there's always that sense in the back of my mind that everyone else has the freedom to say and do whatever comes to mind, but I need to ask permission first.

I'm not sure where to go next.  I suppose I should start trying to find myself again - as cliche and "overdone bildungsroman memoir" as that sounds.  And I think it starts with accepting a few things.  I will never fit in . . . I just won't.  I'm not that kind of person.  I'm always going to be lonely, even in a group.  The good news is that's something I've had since high school to get used to.  It doesn't get easier, but at least it's familiar territory.  And when it gets to the point that I feel unwelcome at social outings . . . well, the library will always let me in.

Of course, it's rather depressing to have no reason to go anywhere else.

I don't know where I'll be in another two years.  But hopefully whatever track I've decided to take between now and then is more successful than the apparently disastrous effort I've dedicated the last two to.  I wish I knew how I went so wrong.  Is there some European thing that could fix me?


P. ost  S. cript
Pretty sure this is what I'll look like going back to work Monday . . .