August 13, 2013
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The disparity between my various selves is rarely so glaringly offensive to me as it was today. Although it does give me a perfect opportunity to compare myself to a gemstone: one single object having so many facets with the smallest degree of difference in the way they reflect the same light...
Also, I have never observed other individuals projecting themselves in a way similar to how I suspect I project myself--not that we are projecting the same self, but that we are aware of having multiple selves and use similar selves in similar situations.
It is the same as everyone else in that everyone has a self they show their coworkers that is different from the self they show their friends and different from the self they show their family, but I am not referring to those natural transitions. The ones I mean are more...self-conscious? There is something different. Staged. But not in the way everyone has a staged self they use when dealing with strangers in stores or in other business transactions, or whom they, as an employee, must interact with at work, or in whatever setting you prefer to imagine. No; I am thinking of a consciously-staged projection used in a situation where a natural one is what most people would use.
I think we have not arrived at a place where we can interact naturally. We had it, and then it went away. That was my doing, I think, because I got curious enough to overcome my natural disinclination...I did not think we were alike enough that she would react the way she did. But we will figure it out.
Now I stop writing before I manage to say something frightfully stupid.
