depressedWhat really disheartens me is my dearth of friendly acquaintances (and it doesn't help that I'm coming online after a day's absence to find none of the personal messages I'm waiting for, none of my IRL friends online, and lots and lots and lots of spam). Like all those SMUSA people, for instance. I guess I was just thinking about them becuase I've been subject to their job interviews. I wore a suit. I complimented SMUSA on everything under the sun. I brought along the election posters I made, the ones that were getting talked about for their cleverness. Now I realize that they never really liked me. They probably thought, as I was filling their mailboxes one day with pictures I took of them during Frosh Leader Camp and Frosh Week, that I was a "nut." My actual friend Rob M. said to me one night, knurd, "You know, a lot of people say you're an up-and-down kind of guy, but I think you're a good guy, and I stick up for you, man." Another night, on that AWFUL Eric Miller pub crawl (more because I had a terrible hangover and didn't have any fun to deserve it), he wrote his phone number on my shirt and invited me to crash at his place if I needed to. And Craig M. was generous like that, too. I'm not saying that I'm expecting people to go out of their way to be nice to me, but let's say I want to hold a friendly conversation with what I think is a friendly acquaintance. Is that too much to ask? Why do I have to hear your older brother tell me, "Yeah, my friends and I don't talk to Will..."
I really should look on the bright side. There's this Natalie woman at Supertemp who looks like she walked out of my Grade 9 fantasies. Well, they were dominated by Andrea, but she's long gone. Part of the reason I wanted to be famous was so I could contact these people again and maybe they'd give me another chance. But now I see the folly in such thinking. First of all, I should be doing things for me and not for anyone else. Moreover, from experience I've seen that people will resent you no matter how awesome you are. Take my high school years, for instance. I had a reputation for being a genius. Did that make people like me? No, some of them still look at me like I'm the guy who caught that foul ball in Wrigley Field last year. I still think back to CPA where Mr. B. Hamilton would ask why I wasn't in the news yet those few times I re-visted (mostly to see
joegod and stigmatic_goth), those few times before the mocking and projectile impacts from people who didn't know anything at all about me became too much to bear. I wonder where I went wrong.So I still have no idea what I'm going to do with my life. Tanya easily convinced me that I need to get my Honours. She's right; it's utilitarian; if you're not Honours, or at least a double major, you're dead. But now I'm still waiting to hear back from the English chairperson. What will she say? Will she take the high road that an unfriendly acquaintance I found working at Sobey's today did, that I'm "super damn smart?" I think back to all my C's, and I know that, "Look, he's lazy," is going to cross that doctor's mind more than twice.
Maybe I should be the one taking the high road. In my years, I have been forgiven for my mistakes by many. Teachers, peers, relatives... they'll forgive and forget, and maybe the people in academia will too, as long as it looks like I'm pulling up my socks. My CQPA is a mere 3.107, but I've been working harder recently, and my QPA for just this past year is 3.817, with 4.075 in English. Overall in English I rank in at 3.05, but that's nothing a few more A's and a good entrance essay can't help me transform into an MA-worthy person. The time for selling myself short is through. Dare I say it, maybe I should even think highly of myself again. Where exactly is the line between "humble" and outright self-deprecation? I'm always going from one extreme to the other. They're all right, I'm a nut. At least the SMU professors give me the benefit of the doubt.
So there's a goal I can set for myself: nurture my self-esteem. (This comes naturally in PEI; I think I have Provincial Affective Disorder.) After that I'd like to join the ranks of the sexually and/or romantically active, but there's no sense biting off more than I can chew at one time.