do you ever... (totally not a knitting post)

do you ever tire of "introspection?" what i mean is searching yourself, finding your motivation for actions, social interactions, personal quirks, etc. i think i have finally tired of it.

after a fairly short, but fruitful, experience with therapy a few years ago i decided to spend a lot of time thinking about myself. not in the fun filled egotistical way of getting everything i wanted, but in ways that were supposedly more constructive and would yield for a better understanding of why i am the way i am. totally intellectual elitism at its absolute peak, if you ask me. but, hell, i am from new england, isn't this why the rest of the country hates us?

what did i learn? well, first and foremost i learned to prioritize myself because i was getting tired of not feeling like i had enough time for myself. that was all well and good however it made me a bit of a hermit which is apparently social suicide. then i decided that i needed to broaden my understanding of other people by interacting with them first hand. how did that turn out?

well, about half of my friends think that i do not like them. based on recent presidential polls i am still better than g.w. bush, but in a small community with big city aspirations 50% is not really a good rating. so, why then do my friends think i do not like them.

well it all boils down to one very specific personality trait. i do not like to share my feelings with people with whom i do not have a 100% solid relationship. it is not necessarily because i do not trust them or because i am clammed up, it is because i just do not feel the need to constantly express my woes or problems to people that i see on an irregular basis and who do not know me well enough to really offer meaningful (albeit well intentioned)advice.

i know that sounds completely jackass but what good has ever come from telling others about your problems without first establishing a friendship? in modern america we meet lots of people through a variety of means including the internet. internet communication allows a person to be removed from their emotions enough that they are often willing to divulge more information about themselves than they typically would in person. (my blog is a prime example of this behavior.) but this kind of "free information" has transformed into an expectation of typical daily interaction between acquiantances.

in my opinion we have all grown up with a variety of experiences that have shaped our worlds and our perspective on the world around us including others. my experiences have made me more private and less socially gregarious. i like to think of myself as a balance to the rest of the worlds constant airing of issues, resentments, problems, divorces, heartaches, deaths, loves, affairs, flings, addictions and ailments. sure i talk about these things especially when they are monumental, but i do not want to pour myself over every item on a laundry list to elicite some kind of superficial friendship based on sharing.

so somehow this quirk or trait created the impression that i do not like other people because i simply wasn't overly open with them. what to do? nothing really can be done except for me to continue to be myself. that is what i've learned through a few years of inspecting the reflection in the looking glass which at this point has become as tiresome as political commercials.