character flaws – room for improvement

So, I focus all too little on the good parts of my personality. I have a stunning eloquence on my flaws, and a great hesitation, and terrible ineloquence when discussing my virtues. I think I’m going to have to sit down and make myself write an entry on why I’m cool, just to balance this out at some point. But for now, I want to chronicle the thoughts I was having. [This seemed so clear on the plane, but it feels like it’s falling apart into incoherence now, ah well]

Part of what started this whole train of thought was, once again, “Leadership without easy Answers”. In analyzing Johnson’s presidency, he compares and contrasts his work on civil rights (which the author says he did a bang up job on) with his work on Vietnam (which the author says he fucked up 6 ways from sunday). In the former case, he kept people’s attention on the fundamental problem, didn’t apply a quick-and-easy authoritative solution to what was fundamentally a widespread values conflict, but did keep it from getting overwhelmingly out of hand. Serious progress was made on the values problem. It’s strange to realize, but it was only about 2 years before Ro was born that blacks had federal legislation protecting their voting rights. My dad was 15 at the time.

In contrast, In vietnam, he made difficult value judgements for the nation, without involving the nation. People inevitably became informed and made their own opinions without his involvement. His lack of open-ness to the input of his constituency cost him the presidency, and the Great Society. But more importantly, the values questions that the war posed remained unanswered. And its unanswered nature is reflected in the wars we’ve fought in Iraq.

An analogy that the author used a great deal was a pressure cooker. Letting the tension build so that people realize there is a problem to work on being akin to turning up the heat, while providing direction and taking action he compares to a release valve, so that it doesn’t explode into a gigantic mess.

I spend alot of my life worrying. My official dsm iv diagnosis when I was seeing a shrink was adjustment disorder with anxious and depressive features. De-jargon-ated, I reacted with inappropriately high levels of anxiety and depression to the events of my life. It’s pretty true. I’ve tended to put the screws on myself out of “what if I’m not good enough” fear (e.g. the urban economy paper). And sometimes I just give up and sulk over challenges that aren’t as big as I’m making them out to be (a natural response to part 1) (e.g. my complete failure to apply to grad school last year). I put myself under alot of pressure, and rarely give it productive release.

Another little feature of life inside my skull is that as my stress level increases, my search for connection (which I view as a search for love, but more frequently ends up as sex) expands, becoming less selective and taking up more of my time/energy/attention. Sorta bonobo-esque, but less healthy. My unwillingness/inability to do something about this drive was a big part of what made me so adamantly and defensively non-monogamous when I first met . In my time with Steve, my first bf, I think I slept with one or two other people once. In my time with Josh, well, several at first, but dramatically fewer as the relationship went on. With Mark, I think I was monogamous, but I honestly don’t remember, because, well, it’s not that important to me.

All of my boyfriends had calming, orienting effects on me. I have never been as academically productive as I was in my time with Josh (excluding the initial “can’t fuck this up” reaction I had to going back to school after dropping out, during which time served as a boyfriend surrogate (no nookie, he’s straight, but I spent much time in his room, perfecting my warcraft2 & worms skills, or doing my homework while he was perfecting his)). And the thing I most enjoyed doing with Josh and Mark (and some with Steve, though I was still somewhat closeted at the time) was hanging with friends.

Perhaps it would be beneficial to me to do what I have to do to cultivate that sense of calm security that I’ve found in bf’s in the past. Key source of insecurity at present: finances. Solution: get a new job, where I find the environment at least as hospitable. Urgency: low, I have a few months of a good job that at worst significantly slows my fall into debt. Importance: high.

In a recent im conversation (or was it dinner conversation, hunh, I wonder) with , he was talking about how he’d grown, and I said I felt I’d changed alot too, over the years. He skeptically (but not critically) asked how, since he hadn’t seen alot of change. I think the change in my case is that my internal stress-monkey-bouncing-off-the-walls and my external easy-going-bordering-on-catatonic persona have gotten a little closer together, and as the gap narrows, my anxiety-paralysis lessens. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Hard to verbalize.