Bitter?

So the game Morrowind, a popular RPG for the Xbox, seems to make me stupid. True to my addictive-personality ways, I've spent most of the past few days playing that game and the surprise is not that I realize I've wasted hours of my life, but that I want to waste more.

Hundreds and hundreds more.

Soon I'll be having one of my rants about how I need to start reading and exercising and all that. I've had enough of those, so let's skip to a different rant and just take my galling failure to improve, even when it's clearly in my best interests, for granted.

I worry sometimes, begins this rant, that I'm becoming too bitter.

I certainly don't feel bitter, not usually. This, however, seems to be one of the emotions that gets ascribed to me quite often and I'm starting to consider the possibility that I am one of those "bitter people."

Well, I'm not.

Seriously though, I had a talk with the bitter little ball of bitterness inside me and we decided that I usually try to be skeptical and often go so far as to be cynical, which I'm fine with. I'm very satisfied with that, in fact.

As far as displays of bitterness go, I do worry that I attack certain people too often. At least once a week, for example, one of my roommates (I think it's usually the skinny one) seems to develop a persecution complex. Worse, I frequently attack beliefs I should—tolerant moderate that I am—probably leave alone.

I mean, it's acceptable to attack Jubb for not believing in evolution, but I should (and, for several weeks now, have) lay off attacking his religion itself. However crazy it may be.

This is where I was going to point out that fact that I don't argue with people to prove that they're stupid, that I don't get some high off of the ignorance of others, but after some deliberation I've decided that's probably not true. I don't argue out of spite or bitterness, but I'm not about to claim that I don't enjoy being right.

I do like feeling smarter than other people, Dear Reader. (And years of journaling and introspection have made me quite conscious of the underlying motives for such behavior, so—don't worry—I know what I'm "really" doing.)

What's more, you probably get the same high that I do. That guilty rush of self-righteousness. Yeah.

I suppose some attacks, which have absolutely nothing to do with bitterness in any way, should be addressed separately.

I use big five-dollar words (words like "solipsism" and "naive" have got me in trouble this term) because they fit, and because I hope that someone at my supposedly-excellent college understands them.

(Not—as Miß Sarah insinuated today—because I hope people don't know what I'm talking about.)

My infrequent attacks on bad grammar, likewise, have more to do with geekness than bitterness. It's twisted interest, not twisted rage, that impels me.

So as far as outward displays of bitterness go, I think most of the evidence against me is at least debatable. There are other flaws in my affect, plenty of them in fact, but I'm not about to own up to any bitterness at the moment.

All misconstrued, goes the blanket statement. I'm not bitter.

Of course, professed introvert that I am, what I think is naturally more important than whatever impression people seem to be getting of me.

As I said before, I don't "feel" bitter. I'm usually happy and rarely bored. I do suspect that I dislike more of my acquaintances than most functional adults, but I feel that I dislike them not out of envy or some other obviously Freudian emotion, but because they're monsters.

As far as the people I do like go, I don't begrudge them anything; that would be somewhat unhealthy. And I believe too much in personal responsibility to be bitter towards some sort of overpowering force because of any flaws in my own situation. Look how well-balanced I can be!

I have felt a bit frazzled and tense these past few weeks, I suppose, which is what has me worried about this bitterness thing. Cabin fever, Jubb's explanation, is probably the culprit.

Expect a calmer, less visibly antagonistic (and, it follows, less seemingly "bitter") Our Bold Hero next term. In three days, I'm gone.