Fault Lines

Maybe it's just a factor of being around the same people too much, I don't know, but then again I seem to do the same thing with people I've never even talked to just as much. What I do know is that as of late I seem to have developed this nasty habit of tabulating and narrating people's flaws or even less virtuously making fun of their annoying habits. The thing is though, I'm too scared to tell any of them to their face; I wait until they're gone and then just feel this uncontrollabe urge to vent to whomever might be around to listen who wouldn't tattle on me.

I'm writing this in part as a vehicle through which I can do the same, just without naming specific people. All this stuff is just driving me nuts, but I don't want to continue bashing everyone behind their backs. Most distrubingly, I think on some level I garner this grain of satisfaction from accurately being able to identify these faults, perhaps, I hope, it's just the result of trying to criticize too many movies as I've tried to do recently.

For example, one of my friends is just driving me to my last end. It's reached such a level that I've begun committing double standards in my mind as I become inwardly angry at him for doing things I do myself because of my frequent annoyance at his other actions. This is a cruel sentence, but I just need to get it out: He's whiny, stingy, vain, unforgiving, has a bad sense of humor, and is a closeminded drama queen and a mama's boy, with only a couple of those adjectives used to any sort of exaggeration. Phew, it's nice to get that off the chest. I was worried I would have the urge to keep writing more stuff about more people but thankfully whatever troubling instinct I posess was just satiated. Basically I just need to keep cool and not let stuff bug me, it's just that sometimes it gets difficult when the same repetitive peeves keep grating on me over and over and they begin seem a lot more significant than they are. So maybe I just answered my initial question, it is a factor of repetition. I suppose the times I relate deprecating stories about people I'm unacquainted with I do so simply for a laugh or to spice up a conversation with an interesting story, not that that's any better, but it's not really as much something I feel I need to get out as my aforementioned burn was. So there's a second lesson, find a way to engage in stimulating conversation that's not at the expense of other people and their (somewhat) uncontrollable circumstances.


I guess I'm still at a crossroads about my last unresolved point. Ripping on people to third parties like some attention starved gossip in hopes that they sympathize with me certainly isn't the most respectable of traits, there's definitely a jerk like quality involved with that. At the same time it seems to be healthy for me in a way, to release some of my bottled up frustration. Naturally I can also just work on not bottling these emotions up in the first place, but that's not an absolute solution, and it's not like I want to turn here instead of to other people and make this blog my on-line burn book. Maybe it's just fair to say that everyone has to vent every now and again, I simply have to try and reduce the frequency of my tirades and make sure that alleviating stress is my only motive. I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse of the debate that has just played out in my pysche. I'd consider pulling the plug on this post altogether as I suppose I've at least partially solved my riddle, but hey, maybe I need some correcting in my logic, or maybe somebody will learn something right?