(Recovered from the old Zero journal, original post date 26 June 2001)

Over the last few months I’ve started thinking long, gloomy thoughts about who I really am. When it comes right down to it, I’m just an average guy. Sure, I’m a bit smarter than some other people. I’m a bit dumber than a number of others, so it all kind of balances out in the end. I’m neither tall nor short, fat nor skinny. I’m not hideous, but I don’t turn heads either.

All in all, it’s not quite where I wanted to be. Then again, I’ve spent so much of my life in a kind of bizarre dreamscape that I probably had no other destiny in store. At any point in my youth I might have learned how to stand up for myself, how to look at myself in the real world and be willing to take steps to improve.

It didn’t work out that way, of course. I’m me, and that’s not saying a whole lot. No, I don’t think I’m a terrible person, but I’m not terribly great either. Again, average.

I suppose what I have to do now is start evaluating what my real strengths are. Determination and drive aren’t among them, that’s for damned sure. I am able to understand many kinds of things, but applying that knowledge seems beyond me. I have a highly developed sense of humor, but it’s been developed in such a way that nobody else shares it. I have a basically kind and gentle nature, but it’s offset by years of frustration and by a basically selfish streak that can’t be denied.

What about all these years of dreaming? I can’t stop now, of course. I’ve been dreaming since my first self-conscious years; it’s a habit too well ingrained to set aside. Is it time to start over? I have a lot of my own emotional values tied up in my dreams. Maybe too much, but again it’s too late in the game to change the rules entirely.

What it all comes down to is that in the end, I don’t like me all that much. I rarely descend into self-loathing, but it’s been known to happen. And now that I’ve achieved a kind of realistic self-appraisal, I understand why I don’t have the kind of social standing or personal graces that I envy in so many others.

It’s the issue of being able to live with this newly-perceived reality that is the next big question. Oh, I’m pretty sure that I can… but each day is a new test of the new old me.