The Creature In The Mirror

Many people feel like they don't fit in.  Some people really don't. I know this because I'm one of them. It's an admission many years in the making, and one that I've had to come to terms with. It's not that I don't form connections, or have close friends. It's just I'm a person who will never occupy the centre ground because I know I'm at my best around the fringes. The late Christopher Hitchens said that one should seek out dispute for its own sake, warning that the grave provides plenty of time for silence. It's a statement that resonates, and a motivation not to settle in the calm waters of convention. Conventional bores me. Bores me wildly, insanely, beyond any adequate description. It ranks alongside polite conversation on my list of no go areas. For me, my overwhelming desire is to be genuine and authentic, to identify my strengths and weaknesses and root out behaviour that makes me less of a man. One area I feel I've slipped is how I talk about others when they are not around. I always prided myself that I would never say something to a third party that I wouldn't say to the person themselves. Ive failed to achieve this and found myself doing the opposite, and I want to challenge myself to do better, to be a better man. I knew it was an issue when I bumped into somebody the other day, and instead of enjoying the interaction I felt a guilt about things I'd said about them to others. This isn't good enough, and I didn't like the feeling that I was being deceitful. Which is why I'm working on it. The realist in me of course understands that's it impossible not to have opinions, but I do need to monitor when and how I share them. I want to be able to look others in the eye and for them to be able to trust my integrity. I've let myself down and I'm going to do better. You see, to do otherwise would be so hypocritical, all the more so because trust and authenticity are qualities I love in others. So not to have these qualities myself would be a bit rich. Anyway, I was rambling on about convention before I lost the plot and became all introspective and self loathing. I'm actually self effacing rather than self loathing, which is a completely different thing.  I wonder, throwing this outward for a minute, what aspects about yourself would you change? And how would you going about doing so? I'm assuming that nobody who reads this is claiming to be perfect, which means there's bound to be something you wish to could either do better or not do at all? Come on? I've fessed up to some of my failings. Where are you at? How real are you being about yourself. Any area in your life where the blinkers are on? Things you find hard to face? Or plain don't want to?