Week 2: Ebenezer

July, 16, 2021

Last week I started a new journey of dissecting my personality, specifically my competitive nature. I thought back to my years in little league where the game of baseball went from carefree pick up games with the neighbor kids to a suddenly hyper competitive game about long lasting bragging rights.

I was really counting on the street cred of winning the 1993 Kearns Township Pony League Baseball Championship to carry over to Junior High that next fall, but it only made things awkward whenever I'd bring it up.

So I fell back on my love of comedy to get into a good friend group. I found the kids with the most Monty Python references and asked them 3 simple questions. What is your quest, what is your favorite color, and what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? When they answered "African or European?" I knew we were good to go.

I kept chasing the attention of my peers and found myself in 8th grade joining up for the school play as the lead hot dog vendor. I took it very seriously, I spent days designing and building my own hot dog cart for what turned out to be about 30 seconds of glory. It was worth it though.

I often think about what part of acting was it that drew me in at such a young age. I enjoyed imagining what life was like for other characters. Being a Jr High kid was boring, and acting was an escape from my own drab reality.

My favorite role was playing  an old rich miser who changed his ways after being exposed to his shadow, the reality of his true character. That role stuck with me throughout my life. It's a painful persona to internalize. Where does a ninth grader go to prepare for that? I guess there was the time I stole money from my sister for ice cream  and was compelled by my parents to make restitution. I really had no clue what a lifetime of wasted opportunities would really feel like.

Maybe that's really the point of doing this self character study now, I don't want to just go through the motions in life to one day discover that I've become a static, boring, self serving, deluded character. Like Ebenezer I've found it difficult to connect with people as I've gotten older. Maybe part of that is I have  had less time to connect. When I was in school I missed many crucial moments with old friends because of my horrible work life balance. I was under a lot of pressure to graduate and make that money for my family!

Besides time constraints, I think I've also been overprotective of my sensitive ego. Rejection hurts and my skin has gotten thinner over the years. I ruminate on rejection way too long to be healthy. My quest is to find the holy grail of not giving a... not taking things personally.  When people say things like, you take too big of bites and maybe that's why you choke on food so much, I no longer call them pseudo gastroenterologists, I try to pause and think, maybe they're coming from a place of compassion, not pride.

Whatever the excuse is, I see the value in opening up and evolving to connect more.  I feel like I've been a squirrel, protecting my stash of acorns, and want to be more like a turtle, able to wander about and see the world while equipped with a protective shell of patience and understanding. I'm working towards that evolution, but that's a hard shell to build.