I’ve been kind of short-fused lately. I can’t point to any specific incident, it’s more like my baseline frustration level is artificially inflated. Nothing too serious, and I feel like I’m returning to normal now anyway.

Reading over my most recent posts to alt.music.tmbg, though, I can tell I’ve been taking myself way too seriously. They look like they were written by someone who loves to hear himself talk. Maybe they were, I don’t know. People who know me in person would probably insist that I’m not that way at all, but on the other hand, what am I doing right now? I’m subjecting the world at large to my pointless introspecturbation. But then, that could be too harsh a self-judgment, in accordance with my constant urge to edit and censor myself. (Hence the compromise of lj-cut.)

I’m starting to wonder if all the solitude of working at home is making me more self-centered and arrogant. Living in New York, being face to face with so many strangers all the time, I couldn’t afford to be misanthropic. Yet it is just as easy to dehumanize people under those conditions, and I eventually tired of the struggle not to be bitter. At the time I blamed the environment for bringing out the most selfish part of me, but now I think maybe that part is not as submerged in my personality as I’d like it to be.

I guess there was a point after all, and it is that I need to relax. Stare at anything too long and it’ll start to look weird; one’s own self is no exception.