I can write absolutely anything about myself here and you'll believe it, or not, because I'm introducing the possibility of falsehood right now. Now here's skepticism tagging along, perhaps even hostility. But I don't want you to be hostile. The unassailable truth that you're still reading these words out of all of the galactic buffet of available options suggests that we could be friends, even more, even less.

Here's one true thing about me: I need to believe you're not here so that I can get past this filler paragraph and get to something about myself worth saying. So I'll continue to be dull for a bit and you can take your leave. Self-reference isn't a personality. Structure without substance is boring. Observing the world is useless if one never does anything to shape it. Simultaneously drawing people in and pushing them away is a distasteful trait.

Okay, I am alone now. That statement put a smile on my face. Being alone is so cozy, the extroverts don't know what they're missing. And yet they would say the same of me! Oho! I am very smart. So are all of my closest, most longtime friends. But when I think of them and the trappings of their lives I wonder why I'm Different™️. These are surface-level differences, categories, boxes on a form, but do the boxes not gesture toward the infinite wellspring of depth that makes up a human life? I think their infinities are deeper than mine. I want the deeper infinity. Why does my progress in this domain feel glacial when theirs seems to be of a more normal pace?

Pesky thief of joy! I don't think comparison is the correct label here. This is curiosity? Yes. Everything is great and greater still yet not great enough. Tenuous liminal phase of life, but the present is the only ever-present structure! I'm increasingly eager to tie a beautiful bow on the past year and more when I haven't yet bought the ribbon. Though it is nice to think that this could be a present for someone else, not just me. It makes me smile.