Pontificate

So, the highlight of my day has been making a journalist's blog.

I seem to hold this great attraction for people wanting to know my political opinions. I find this slightly funny because my political views are all over the map, and I'm totally unreasonable about them. But I'm happy to offer them as long as they don't devolve into fruitless discussions (see below). Maybe I don't like to be contradicted, or maybe I just don't see the point sometimes. We are all going to do what we are all going to do anyway. That's being human.

This political solicitation happened rather vividly back in 2004 when I was back in North Carolina. A friend and I went to the Concord, NC Young Democratics meeting. There were about sixteen of us. And we were the only ones that really qualified as "young."

Anyway, I got interviewed, said a lot of very harsh things about George W., and my parents got harassed about it for weeks. At least the local newspaper seems to have a wide readership. It also confirmed my status as a total outcast of the community which was coming anyway since I was not married, knocked up and working in a shift job by age 25.

I'm actually not an attention seeker who craves this publicity, and I don't understand people who are (nor trust them or their motives). I'm uncomfortable in front of crowds. I only made it as a teacher because I would imagine everyone naked, but then stopped being able to do that when my students were kids. I get nervous. I can't breathe. I can write the speeches but I can't deliver them. I forget my sentences midway through. I fake it a lot (which is really obvious if you read my quote in said blog).

I'm so much more comfortable in the written word. So much less information to process, no body language to read, no eye contact to measure, no hands fidgeting or gesticulating between anger and supplication, no mistrust to prove. I get to stay at home and produce, I get to live through typing.

God, I want to write so badly.