New People, Laundry, and Insecurities – Thoughts from August 5 and 6, 2023

August 5, 2023

When I meet someone new at work, I try to find out work related things first and then move on to their interests. No one completely loses me with their interests, but I find myself less enthused about what some people find interesting. Sports is one of those things. Many people assume because I present as a normal white male that I’m interested in sports. I usually let them know my wife is a baseball fan. If they continue to tell me about sports things, I tell them I’m not interested in any sports. There are certain sports that I have to bring up my ethical problems with, but letting them know I’m not interested in sports stops most sports conversations. This is not the only difficult discussion to have with new people. The hardest thing to talk about with new people is what the next paragraph is going to talk about.

The hardest thing about meeting new people is not knowing if they are religious. I assume most people are unless I hear otherwise. Sometimes they have jewelry of crosses or other religious symbols. Other times, they speak in religious phrases that give them away. Being an atheist for thirty-plus years has taught me to only talk about religion with people I know well. Even then, there are people I will never talk about religion with. Religious discussions either disturb or bore me. There is no happy religious discussion with me.

August 6, 2023

They can’t all be winners. That’s the fundamental premise of this Thoughts paper. Start with low expectations and build from there. I don’t even know what a winning Thoughts paper would be. What would I win? Speaking of something I wasn’t really talking about, behind-the-scenes stuff is always interesting. Shut up! Yes, it is! It’s what I’m talking about in the next paragraph, so get over it.

I found out the other day that none of my WordPress postings have been forwarding to Facebook. That includes this blog that you’re reading right now. It’s Thoughts from Life by Brian Kirwan. That’s what you’ve been reading all this time. What does this mean to you? Absolutely nothing if you’re not on Facebook. For old people like me, it’s where I get my highly cultivated version of what’s going on in the world. If it’s not there, I don’t see it. I am my audience not only because I write these words to entertain myself, but because I feel a connection to you, the reader. We may never meet. On the other toe jam, you may know me quite well. Who knows? Who cares?

It’s Sunday night. That means Patti is doing laundry. When I check with her to see where she’s at, she usually says she is “waiting on the towels.” I’m going to check with her and see what she says. (Pause) It took a while for her to get back to me, but she answered me in that modern version of conversation known as a text. She said it should be soon. That means she’s not quite to the towels yet. To give you an idea of how long I waited for a response, I wrote the following two paragraphs while I was waiting. Hopefully, she will have me take the towels out of the dryer when I get home. Otherwise, she will stay up waiting for them.

People are interesting. The show they put on for the world is usually boring, but the parts they don’t reveal are interesting. We hide the interesting parts of ourselves and reveal our collection of fake smiles. I’m past embarrassment so I see no reason to hide the interesting parts of myself. Some people will tell you all about what they don’t like. These are never interesting conversations. You can find interesting things about people in them, though. The reasons people don’t like things reveals their fears and emotional state. They cut themselves off from them because they cause them emotional distress. When people give me their list of dislikes, I usually ask them why they don’t like them. This is when the interesting conversation can begin.

I find people with insecurities more interesting than people who seem to have it all together. The flaws in our personalities show who we really are as people. Perfect people are perfectly boring. Luckily, perfection doesn’t exist. People who appear perfect are some of the most flawed people you’ll meet. It surprises many people when they find out how messed up celebrities are. It shouldn’t surprise anyone. Fame and money mess up as many lives as any other addiction. Drugs and alcohol separate you from reality just as fame and money do. Everything in your life is fake. You present your relationships, knowledge about the world, and understanding of life on a shiny fake serving dish. No one can relate to your problems because you can’t relate to the world.

When you break down the lyrics to most popular songs, they really don’t add up too much. Love, sadness, and partying make up most of the subjects in the songs. I don’t listen to most lyrics until I’ve heard a song several times. When I wrote songs, the lyrics were the last thing I worked on. The voice is just another instrument and the words you sing are just expressive notes. They have power, but only when added to the chord changes, rhythm, and power of the song as a whole. Songs are good despite their lyrics, not because of them.