They call me the working man.

Confession:  I quoted Rush in a paper I wrote in high school completely out of context, but just to do it.  It went something like this:  “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.  That has literally nothing to do with this paper, but I wanted to cite Rush in my bibliography because I’m a senior.”

That’s what you’re working with here, guys.  But on to actual points that are worth making (maybe):

I’m forever working on myself. I want to be better than I am. I also want to be more content with who I am. Yes, that’s right, one of the things I’m working on is not working on myself so damned much.

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I’m a total badass.

I used to be a badass.

I had swagger. I viewed myself as, quite possibly, the best damned thing that had ever happened.  The undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

Of course, as is the case with anyone with swagger, I was insecure about my possible inadequacies. I had a low grade fever all the time: a fear that my inflated versions of my own reality would be punctured. The fever sapped my energy. The echoes of my own inner voices reverberated in my head on a constant loop until my ears were ringing.

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The Stupidity Vigilante, or: How I Went From Eternally Pissed to (Mostly) Peaceful

You’ve never heard of the Stupidity Vigilante, and that’s ok. He was my alter ego, and I killed him slowly and quietly. The world is better off for it. Trust me.

Here’s the history. I am from the middle of nowhere, raised in an evangelical Christian home in the rural United States. We were not “poor,” I’d say we were lower-middle class if I had to guess. I’ll put it this way – the kids I thought were “rich” turned out, with some perspective, to just be normal suburbanite families with more than a few hundred bucks in the checking account.

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