Anti-Bragging

Inspired by @tr0x on Twitter.com, here's my anti-bragging list @ age 32.

I suck at most anything sports related. I'm egotistical and I hate to lose, from which naturally follows I never liked being on any sports team. I was on a T-Ball team when I was 6. I played right field, couldn't catch a ball to save my life, and that team ended-up winning the league championship. I chose to retire on top, you might say.

I'm physically incapable of cleaning a bathroom adequately. Sad, ain't it?

Invariably, I start a project, get 25% to 75% through it, then let it languish until it's overdue, then half-ass it to the finish. Yes, this drives me nuts about myself. I've no idea why I do it. Yes, it makes my longsuffering wife want to kill me.

I suck at simple arithmetic, particularly that done in my head. Love higher math, but simple addition and subtraction is like kryptonite. I'm almost phobic about it; I have nightmares where I run a cash register and I can't ever count back the change correctly.

I'm self-centered. I started a blog and talked about myself for 9 years, didn't I? Thought my opinion was worth disseminating through the interwebs. Note: I haven't blogged much lately because I finally realized how egotistical it was. Then I moved to FB & Twitter to do the same thing, only from a mobile device :-)

I like people...until I don't. Caught this particular bug from my mom. I love people, and I get lonely without them. But, at the most inopportune times, I just want time to myself. I'm a lonely loner, if that makes any sense. Ergo, I want relationships, so long as they suit me. Then I want to drop them. Which leads me to...

I'm a flake. If *anything* about myself sucks the most, it's this. I'll promise you the world, then forget, get occupied with something else, or half-ass doing it. If I overreact when people flake out on me, it's because I loathe that quality about myself.

I'm too hard on myself. I don't have fun, because all I can think about is how much I suck, how dumb I look, and how much of a loser I am. Getting too wrapped-up in the whole "here's how I look," versus the real effects to other people, my wife, my kids. Ugh.

I'm ridiculously bad to my body. I don't exercise. I don't sleep. I don't eat correctly. Aside from smoking, drugs, or Fight Club, not sure how I could be worse to myself.

I worry. Again, going with the self-centered stuff. I think everything is fixable/controllable if I work hard enough at it, which is just ego. I know, logically, that my sphere of control is pretty darn small, but part of me just doesn't care. Which leads me to....

I'm a control freak. The duality of my nature is one part whiny, indolent child and another part incredibly strict parent pushing that child to do what's required no matter the circumstance. I'd settle for being an integrated "adult" who genuinely wanted to do things without the driving taskmaster of the "parent" part. (Yes, that borrowed heavily from 'I'm okay, You're okay'. Thank you, Judy Brashear, AP English Senior Year, Breathitt High School).

I'm just frigging dull. Dull, dull, dull. When you work, worry, eat, and sleep (and not much else) it's not like you can be a good raconteur. I've got a great story about how I debugged a deadlock in a mulithreaded library yesterday. What...not interested?

I'm narcissistic. Pretty much sums up all the above, except maybe the cleaning a bathroom part.

* * *

In spite of all the above, my wife loves me. My kids love me. God loves me. I have no idea why, sometimes.

I've reached that point in life not where I'm slowing down or anything, but I realize my place. I'm a father, husband, son, worker, (bad) friend. I still look through the window of life and see others enjoying, where I...don't. Not really. I expect too much, and am thankful not enough. Sort of poisons everything else.

::sigh::

This got a lot heavier than I wanted at first. I just....I get alot of crap for being a narcissist, and I am, but I'd like to show that I don't think I'm all that. I've got alot of 'anti-brag' stuff sloshing around inside this over-inflated ego, too. Maybe you do, too. Maybe you should admit that to yourself and move on.

So, with that, my first 32 years were a blur. May the next 32 be less so.