Learning my critics are right

I had a really huge moment of recognition, today.

My critics are right. My professors. My administrators. Brandi.

It is not just that I'm an organizational oaf, which I am.

It is that I have finally figured out the key to the problem that I have been spending nearly 15 years of my life, at least, struggling with. My problem with organizational detail and time and life management is that I have lacked the attention it has needed and the energy involved with constantly resolving issues involved with its priorities.

I had an interview today. Everything went great until I started talking about this problem, more openly. There were so many good reasons to be honest about it, but above them all was that so I could be honest with myself about this problem for me.

And so Devang and I walked and talked about this problem for me all night And all of a sudden it occurred to me that the larger problem, as he pointed out, was that I had not given the organizational detail in my life sufficient attention.

And what I realized shortly thereafter was that what Brandi Fisher and Jason Simon, a friend of mine, always had going for them in this department was that they had amazingly high levels of energy to give to their organizing and planning and creatively approaching the small details of life. And that took work. And I was just not giving enough attention to the organization and planning and details and I just wasn't giving life enough energy. And that is how so many higher achievers than me have given so much. And that is why my lazy, white trash roots matter. Because I'm lazy, white trash and I just don't give enough energy to life so I don't reap its rewards.

They have all been right. I have been a lazy, excuse-making loser. And that is why Brandi left me and that is why KU wouldn't keep me around and that is why Eisenhower fired me and that is why Olathe is not going to hire me.

Because I am a lazy, excuse-making loser.

And that shit has got to end.

Maybe all this thinking and political work and all of this has just been one big pretension and excuse for why I am such a a lazy, excuse-making loser.

I had two people in my life who I was very close to - Brandi, who was my best friend and later my girlfriend and who I spent almost every waking moment with for at least 4 years, and Jason Simon, our very close friend and the most organizing, detail-0riented, planning motherfucker that I've ever met in my entire life - both giving me the example I needed. But I couldn't heed it, even though it sat in front of my face almost every day of my life for more than 5 years because I was too much of a defensive dumbfuck to face up to my weakness on this one.

But as I sat in that interview, today, and the mood turned from eager and welcoming to wondering if they should have invited me, it started to occur to me that I have just been a defensive dumbfuck around this issue and that I lost everything because I could not face up.

I lost everything. Everything I cared about. And I still couldn't face up.

Because I didn't know what to do, is the truth.

I've got to get a shower and get to bed.

But, in the meantime, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe everything I've done has just been one big lie to myself and everyone else to explain away why I am such a fuckin' loser.

What else am I wrong about? What else can't I see?

How many more times do I have to lose a job or an opportunity or the love of my life before I face up to my weaknesses and make it my fuckin' business to get problems solved?

I feel like the biggest asshole in the world, right now. I lost Brandi because of this shit? I lost my opportunities with KU and with Eisenhower because of this shit? I have been thought the biggest fuckin' whiner and loser or the last fuckin' 15 years because of this shit?

But it's true. I have been a big fuckin' whiner and loser. How much of my bullshit is to cover for that fact, I wonder.

I don't know, right now. I need a shower.

Love,
Ben