When I came back from getting my lunch today everyone was gathered around Andrew's workstation listening to "Captain". I also got an e-mail from one of my classmates asking how she could download it so that she could listen to it on her MP3 player. Neat. :-)

I'm having a bit of a weird time here. It's been growing for a few years now but it's really reached a head lately. You see, I'm being observed with qualities such as "articulate", "attractive", "outgoing" and "confident". Not that I'm complaining, but you see from someone who was shy, beat up on the schoolyard, and a twig-boy covered in pimples during puberty, such descriptors are somewhat baffling.

I guess two specific things have happened. First, I can honestly look in the mirror and say I've fully finished growing and have moved on to the aging part. Not that it's a bad thing; I rather prefer looking definitively like a man and not a kid. Second, after many years of arduous learning I've mostly figured out how to deal with people. I say "mostly" because interpersonal relations are a chaotic, ridiculous, and inefficient mess which I argue no human can ever master. People are prone to making assumptions, being self-concious, and whether deliberately or not, playing foolish social games with eachother when what is actually required is honest, sincere communication. Having to account for all these negative factors often leads to overanalysis on my part. Nonetheless I am usually determined to get as honest discourse as possible out of people so that I can better relate to them (either that or I just don't bother caring). I've realized that parsing social information now takes up a huge amount of my brainpower. Watch, listen, learn, relate. Despite generating this apparent illusion of "confidence", I'm still eternally annoyed by the concepts that out system of social relation are based in, particularly in terms of the unnecessary degree of propriety which is often involved. Honesty, used delicately, and acceptance are usually the best policies in my view.