shower power

At some point, the life I had lauded on this very blog lost its charm...probably about two years ago. I starting mentally calling bullshit on the community I had wrapped myself in like a warm and fuzzy sweater. Things just started feeling like this vaguely pretentious, privileged, almost entirely white, middle class, self-involved, passive-aggressive dystopia. And within that group, I had become this court jester; invited along to shuck and jive, be funny & crazy & outlandish & over the top enough that it probably made people feel better about their choices...that brilliant moment of "damn, at least I didn't take it that far." I really started to feel like the lone little boy who noticed the nakedness of the emperor, despite everybody else's conviction that he was in the finest garments EVER. So I bowed out. I think I did it as gracefully as I am personally capable of, most likely not... In the process I lost a few people who I didn't think I would lose. And that makes me sad. Friendships ended. Feelings hurt. Opportunities lost. Bridges burned, without even the memory of tossing the Molotov to have made it so. Probably the most deleterious side effect of all of this is that I also lost a great deal of my ability to relate to people. And to keep my mouth shut. Although, frankly, that one has always been a problem. I just spent a week doing a work thing, and by the end of it I didn't really like myself very much. I don't feel like a good person; I spend a fair amount of time in the douche-zone.