i think something i’ve been noticing about my interactions with people the last few months is a lack of depth. it feels like it’s been a year of nothing but surface-level interactions, how-do-you do’s and how’s the weather, oh that’s nice, and the family, good i hope? while there have been notable exceptions, i even think that part of my creation of this blog had to do with a need to express what’s going on deeper inside, even if i only use it for that purpose ever so rarely.

even now as i try to look at what i’m trying to say, the paragraphs flow unevenly and without clarity. it’s like i’m fundamentally out of practice with baring my soul to others, lowering my defenses of cleverness and humor and taking a stab at brutal honesty. the most frightening thing about this is that i don’t know how it happened. like the lobster that sits contently in the water as the temperature slowly increases, so too have i sat by and watched my heart harden and my retorts become colder, my nature more bitter and salty.

of course my analogy is flawed. i have to acknowledge that i’m the one turning up the heat, as it were. i want to be more bitter. i want to be hard, impenetrable and unhurt by those around me. a snarky asshole? i was once one of the best, tearing down the best of them and always on guard for a faster gun. i haven’t properly been one in years, even approaching a decade. and now i’m in conflict with myself for dragging out those old skills, for going all clint eastwood unforgiven and pulling out the gunbelt that long ago i’d sworn to put behind me.

the only solution that i see is to try to turn that behavior around. to seek out deeper interactions where i can, and to discourage in myself defensiveness and perpetuating surface-level interactions.

that, or i could just move to barrow and hermit down.