Navel-gazing after work:

It’s less than a month before my 56th birthday, and while I was on the cattlecar on the way home, listening to Yes’s “90125,” I started to take stock of myself. These are some of the conclusions that I am making of myself. (I may be talking out of my ass.)

I might be a bit agoraphobic. I don’t like being outdoors during the daytime.  I do feel a bit of anxiety when I am out in public, that is why I have to do something to relieve the tension.  Most of the time, it is reading a book that I carry in my backpack.  Sometimes, it involves listening to music on my smartphone with ear buds in so I can shut out the world.

I am claustrophobic, I don’t like being closed in. This poses a major problem for me, because I have to depend on the cattlecar to get home from work. The one that I take is always packed full, and with some of the worst examples of so-called humanity that you will ever run across. Again, the music on my smartphone with ear buds helps in that regard. If I don’t hear them, then they don’t disturb me.

I am misanthropic.  I have disdain for people in general. Most of the people that I come across in my day to day life are so below me on a mental and emotional scale that I cannot feel any empathy for them. (Again, the cattlecar reinforces my misanthropy.)

Other conclusions that I have realized about myself:

I have become a creature of habit. Everything in my life has to be preprogrammed. From when I get up early in the morning, to when I get home in the late afternoon, everything has to follow a set pattern. Otherwise, I will not be able to function properly.

I hate taking time off from work.  Yes, I get three weeks of vacation off every year. I don’t like taking vacations. If I am not at work, then I am not accomplishing anything. I am slacking off. That also goes back to my agoraphobia. I hate traveling. When I am out of the house, I prefer the shortest distance between two points. I have to have a goal when traveling outside my comfort zone. (Things such as grocery shopping or buying specific things.  No diversions, no off the wall side trips. Point A to point B, that is all I want.)

I have become less tolerant of other people’s behavior.  Yes, I will be polite to everyone, but when confronted by someone who falls outside my concept of normal, I may be polite on the outside, but on the inside I will be screaming “ARE YOU FOR FUCKING REAL?”  It takes every shred of self-control to prevent me from bitchslapping them upside their heads with a two-by-four.

Have I become more of a headcase, or am I a product of this dystopian world that we live in now?

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© 2014, Dean A. Basler Jr., all rights reserved.