I’m trying to be less of a ridiculous idiot.  Lamenting over things out of my control.  My big fear is I’m the horse from Animal Farm.  I work hard, then work harder, and the minute I stop working they send me to the glue factory of obscurity.  Like obscurity is such a bad thing.  Some of the happiest people lead the obscurest lives, according to a rationalization I just made.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to be famous, but I have this delusion locked in my brain that I was sent here (to Earth, not this web address) to help people emotionally, or spiritually, or whatever bullshit you want to call it.  That I’m slightly better than human, which logically I know is incorrect, but emotionally I can’t let go of the idea.  Beyond white guilt, I have “privilege guilt,” — this idea I’ve been blessed with so much, there must be a reason, a way to give back.  So I’m not allowed to be normal in my mind.  Why do I think it’s bad to be normal?  To not be special?  Maybe there are some questions a blog can’t answer.

I’ve always felt out-of-place.  Since I was little, there have been so many thoughts of, “Why are people doing this?  It doesn’t make any sense!”  But when you’re the only person saying behavior is insane, by logic, what are the chances that you’re right and everyone else is wrong?  That’s where The Simpsons, and The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, and South Park all made me feel better.  Anything where the authority figures were usually wrong.  It’s cliché, but it really was like oxygen to a person who’s drowning.  Just an, “Oh thank God, I’m not insane!”  One of my favorite lyrics is from a Queens of the Stone Age song, “Better Living Through Chemistry.”  There’s a line “There’s no one here, and people everywhere, you’re all alone.”  It’s dead on.  But at some point, if events repeat themselves in different situations, the only constant is you.  It’s some attitude I have. And I think it’s my mindset of always looking for flaws. 

I’ve been a perfectionist as long as I can remember. I’ve developed this thought pattern of constantly projecting things out into the future to see where things could go wrong, in order to guard against that.  In sports terms, it’s called a “prevent defense” or “playing not to lose.”  Almost everything I do is avoidant.  Yet I value learning the most in life, and know I learn the most when things go wrong.  Failure stings, and I can’t forget it.  I have to use energy to imagine how things could go right.  And that’s what I need to do now.  Above comedy, is to develop not a more positive attitude, but a more realistic view of the future.  One that sees where things could go both positively and negatively from any one decision.  At the same time, my life and mindset have improved since high school.  Eighteen year-old me would be excited with this modern incarnation of Thomas Alan Dunlap.  And every once in a while I need to remind myself of that.