I Ask Myself Is This About Me?

I seem to have no problem suspecting that most true narcissistic people are female.

However, that's just one man's opinion. I think the general consensus is that most abusive individuals are male. So from that I should be able to conclude that if there is a narcissist in my marriage it's much more likely it's me since I am the male.

That said, it seems to me like I've read from multiple sources that a narcissist doesn't seek advice about narcissism and I fail that particular test for narcissism big time. I want to know what it is, how it affects the people around me, what can be done about it. I want to understand narcissism from the victim's perspective.

A day or two back I came across a YouTube channel by a lady named Joanna Kujath. She has many videos on the subject and seems to hit the nail right on the head. She speaks from the point of view of someone who has herself overcome the impact of a narcissist in her own life. At least that's how it seems to me. Anyway, here's a link to what I think could be a good introductory video of the subject.

My problem is that I've always thought that song was about me ever since the first time I remember hearing it in that small village pub just off base. Maybe that's why I'm so drawn to the idea it may be me, not her, who is the guilty one.

Early to Bed

Well I might need to go to bed early. This afternoon the sun came out and it warmed right up, maybe to 50 or 55 who knows but the sun was baking by around two o'clock. I'd had no energy at all this morning. It was another cold drab day till noon or so.
I went to the bike shop downtown and got a tube for FatBoy. After I'd given him new sneakers his rear tire kept going flat so today was fix that problem day. Then it was I want to go for a bike ride! So I started off slow, didn't know how far I'd go but it stayed nice and I wound up biking around the 5-mile square including a side trip to the airport.
FatBoy is acting strange with its new tires. They do this snake thing when they tilt to one side or the other and it doesn't take much tilting for them to do it. They pull the steering towards whichever side they are tilted to and that is extremely annoying on a road with a side slope and there's a fair amount of paved road right now that tilts towards the ditch both sides of the road.
Other than that the ride was awesome fun for my first ride of the year. After that ride, though, I might just go to bed early.

I've been spending small amounts of my time attempting to learn Davinci Resolve. I have the free version. It's a powerful video editing application that you can download for free. I just discovered the manual it comes with which has over 1,300 pages. I'm on page 16. There are good videos on YouTube about it too. It's been a long time since I attempted to learn a new application this powerful. Actually it's a first. This is a professional tool used for commercial video. I just want something to do with my video in my spare time. It will render YouTube 720p video if you wish or render high grade video or even DVD video. So we'll see what becomes of this new hobby.

It's still basically mud season here in this part of Maine. The water is high in most of the streams and anywhere else that water flows in spring. Anywhere off-road is wet. Lots of mud.

The other day I was thinking the term mud season tarnishes the good reputation of the word "spring". But really, our "spring" gets split in half. Once winter does let up, mud season kicks in and when that's finally all over and all the frost has left the ground and the mud has all dried up then it's blackfly season and that gets over just in time for the start of summer.

The worst part is that WE HERE ALL KNOW THIS! It's a fact of life here. It's as regular and predictable as snow in winter and fun in summer.

Jessica

Quite a few years ago I signed up for an evening "creative writing" class down at the University of Maine and met this... let's say... unforgettable young single mom taking the same class. Her name is Jessica. By the way, Jessica, thank you for loaning me that pen the first night of class. I'd have been lost without it!

Yesterday I was searching through my room to see if I could find a missing battery charger for my new Lumix waterproof camera and in the back of the top drawer of my dresser I came across a letter that Jessica had written me several months after the class had finished. Jessica was the sort of person, for me anyway, that you just don't want to lose touch with. I wanted to be friends with her. So I wrote her a romantic letter because let's face it, I found her very attractive. She was intelligent to the extreme but also very attractive... and tall... and blonde even!

Anyway she wrote me back that she wasn't looking for a guy but she added a paragraph at the end that my writing her was romantic and she encouraged me to keep trying.

I actually don't remember if I replied to her letter or not but I did take it as a rejection. It wouldn't have been entirely inappropriate for her and myself to become friends since I was separated from my wife at the time, as I recall, but there was an enormous age difference between us so in that sense it was inappropriate. But I remember wondering at the time and I have wondered ever since if she meant I should not give up hope of finding a romantic relationship with someone else or if she meant I should not give up hope of having a romantic relationship with her! What a mystery!

However, by that time in my life I had come to realize that there is a very thin line, invisibly thin in fact, between a guy showing romantic interest in someone and him stalking her. For her sake and for my own I didn't cross that line after her letter with one tiny little exception. I hope she was OK with that exception.

Anyway, just thought I'd mention it.

Jessica, if you're still out there and if you ever read this, rest assured in my mind you were not just friendly and helpful and smart, you were beautiful. I enjoyed knowing you.