Writing and Rhetoric II: Cultural Autobiography
“Confessions of a College Boy Bore”
What most people don’t know about teenage angst is that it tends to overstay its welcome.
As the world turns, who I am and who I have been are perpetually at odds, the gap created by passing time growing narrower and narrower. As I grow older and begin to more and more embrace the cathartic power of the written word, who I have been has become more frequently documented in anything from spur of the moment blog (yes… blog) posts to simple style of prose. And as I grow older, the need to reflect on who I have been through these writings has become more frantic and pessimistic.
I am not racing to become someone who isn’t what I was. I feel I am always someone who isn’t what I was. Instead, I am straining to stand still, let who I was catch up to who I am and find a way to be content with both.
Vague.
I can be so vague.
Self-analysis is a disease.
I know what I want but not how to get it. I know what I need to do but not how to do it. I know who I do not want to be but not how to be who I am.
People make their own luck and they make their own trouble.
My life is an easy one to lead, my problems are not unsolvable, and those who I surround myself with are pleasant, appropriate, and necessary. I am not unhappy.
But I find absolution and contentedness unattractive. If I find no fault with myself, how might anyone else discover my redeemable qualities?
There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
Perhaps I overcompensate, but better to constantly avoid what I despise than to accidentally become it.
And we are all the same. The world is just as confused as a 20-year-old boy pretending he knows who he is. No one really knows who he is, let alone who anyone else is. Let alone what anyone else is. What anything else is. There is so much to be learned from what we cannot understand. The world is filled with people who pretend to be so different from one another.
And we are all the same.
What most people don’t know about teenage angst is that it tends to overstay its welcome.
As the world turns, who I am and who I have been are perpetually at odds, the gap created by passing time growing narrower and narrower. As I grow older and begin to more and more embrace the cathartic power of the written word, who I have been has become more frequently documented in anything from spur of the moment blog (yes… blog) posts to simple style of prose. And as I grow older, the need to reflect on who I have been through these writings has become more frantic and pessimistic.
I am not racing to become someone who isn’t what I was. I feel I am always someone who isn’t what I was. Instead, I am straining to stand still, let who I was catch up to who I am and find a way to be content with both.
Vague.
I can be so vague.
Self-analysis is a disease.
I know what I want but not how to get it. I know what I need to do but not how to do it. I know who I do not want to be but not how to be who I am.
People make their own luck and they make their own trouble.
My life is an easy one to lead, my problems are not unsolvable, and those who I surround myself with are pleasant, appropriate, and necessary. I am not unhappy.
But I find absolution and contentedness unattractive. If I find no fault with myself, how might anyone else discover my redeemable qualities?
There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
Perhaps I overcompensate, but better to constantly avoid what I despise than to accidentally become it.
And we are all the same. The world is just as confused as a 20-year-old boy pretending he knows who he is. No one really knows who he is, let alone who anyone else is. Let alone what anyone else is. What anything else is. There is so much to be learned from what we cannot understand. The world is filled with people who pretend to be so different from one another.
And we are all the same.
posted by AHaynes at 4:41 AM
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