Keep an eye out

1) a gym/workout buddy
2) a wingman
3) a close group of challenging friends - time to clean house again and get active with the search

Blame it on the Alcohol

It's a well-known fact that alcohol reduces inhibition. What is also well known to me and my friends is how wild I am when I drink. If I think back to high-school, no alcohol was needed in order to induce the sort of mania that I sometimes seem to exhibit. It came naturally. With time, admonishment, tense encounters, and an occasional embarrassment these tendencies quieted themselves in daily life. However, like a dormant volcano that was only resting, my shadow self rises with a fermented fury after my 5th or 6th drink. The volume of my voice doubles, gravity ceases to matter as a leap over tables and bars, and strangers are nothing to be feared (the worst they can do is look at you funny). As I purposely kick and blur the boundaries of social acceptance tense situations are a risk (in addition to personal injury), but I am generally able to dissipate these situations as quickly as I create them.

Carnality bubbles to the surface and a raw sense of power almost drips through my veins. I'm also almost always exceedingly ebullient. My strangers always ask my friends "is he doing blow?."

What's most interesting to me about the whole thing is that this entirely different personality sits quietly within me each day as I sit at my cube, in church, in traffic, or through 3 hour films. Have I slowly through societal coercion and pragmatism unknowingly forced myself into voluntary domesticity? Have I thrown a wet blanket on the small embers that make my soul unique?

I don't know what it means, but the Jekyll & Hyde-ness of it all struck me as I woke up the morning and I wanted to write it down.

Biting my tongue is like pissing on the fire in my belly. I feel like crap when I hold back and relieved when I share how I really feel. I need to make sure I share how I feel in a thoughtful and tactful way. I don't like wondering "what if." I usually hold back out of fear (mostly to avoid a specific outcome I don't want), but usually just verbalizing it is enough to make that hollow feeling of dread go away. I should be more worried about repressing my feelings than I should about not getting what I want.

I've got to avoid talking about politics and controversial social issues with my friends, so they remain so. It's just an annoying habit I need to eliminate. The causes of beliefs are too deep to understand in a 30 minute chat over coffee and these things are best handled through long, dispassionate letters, books and emails anyway. I need to use the time I have with friends for more personal matters.

On being yourself

It seems pretty obvious, but to be fully happy being yourself requires people who understand you. I need to pay more attention to when I'm biting my tongue and generally holding back, as well as the times when I feel truly liberated to say what's on my mind (and accepted when I am able to do so).

After a while you come to expect disappointment in certain parts of life. I suppose it's not really disappointment though at that point, just skepticism. Though it's hard to feel the palpable glee like a child anxiously awaiting Santa's gifts, or a much-anticipated date later in life without pure disregard for disappointment.