Strangely Naked

What am I doing? What is the point of all this? Does anyone still read blogs anymore? Is the expression of opinion on the internet just an exercise in being a blowhard? Are there people with answers to self-doubting questions? Is there a level of arrogance to which I need to ascend in order to have answers rather than an insurmountable amount of questions that act like the quicksand that terrified me as a child?

Is this a good idea? Why would I write a post like this composed entirely of rhetorical questions, opening myself up for unwanted answers? Should I expect that people will answer any one of these varied questions with a questions and then I’ll have to answer those questions with a question or should I answer those questions with a pithy one-word answer like a jerk to heighten the joke? Who could know if not me?

Do people appreciate it when someone plays with the the dying genre of the blog? Would we all be better off if I and every other person blogging just succumbed to modern sensibilities and started a podcast or figured out whatever the hell Periscope is? Seriously, though, what is Periscope? Have I gotten to the age where something new comes out and I look at it like someone handed me a polaroid of grizzly bear making passionate love to a kangaroo with distended nipples? What’s the point of it? What was I referring to when I used the pronoun “it”?

Would we all be better in relationships if the person filled in our exact deficiencies? For example, if I were to date someone filled in all of my emotional gaps, wouldn’t that be more healthy than if I dated someone with similar codependent tendencies? Could we both be codependent yet still fit together like a jigsaw of depression? Have I tricked my significant other into liking me? Am I clever enough to have outwitted such a brilliant person for over a decade? I’ve been deluding myself since birth, so how hard could it be to delude another person? It’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours making you an expert, does that mean my lying and creating a strange, illusion of my own self-meaning make me an expert in deluding others?

Am I and my mind the living embodiment of volitional torture? Could “self-reflection resulting solely in self-doubt that manifests in self-imposed, unnecessary stress,” stand as the definition of volitional torture?

When is it okay to give up? I ask all of these questions to a therapist and the response is, “How does that make you feel?” To which, I respond, “Is my inadvertent enrollment as a verbal flagellant (not flatulent, you goof) not enough of a clue as to my condition? Where are the answers!?! How can we redirect this leaky boat of a brain!?!”