Out of touch.

The time has come. A time I hoped would never come. I feel I'm losing touch with my roots. I think I need to write something. Something to remind people of who I am, including myself.

The name of this blog is Slowerville. That's because it's my ville of Slowerdom. Greg McKnight (or maybe it was Doug) coined the phrase "Slower" years before he met me. When Greg really got to know me, he decided to give that term to me. It was not intended as a compliment, nor was it intended as anything more than a running joke about my odd priorities, among other things.

I took that name and embraced it. Although I was not the first, I would like to think I am...or maybe I was...the ultimate Slower. I added some things to what it meant, of course. If you really wanna know what it means to me, I don't think I can out-write myself, so read the very first post on this blog. To sum it up: I like to think of myself as a person who lives without concern for the speed at which my peers move, a person who lives according to his own standard of enjoying life and doing whatever it takes to make others happy.

I feel as though I've slowly lost touch with both of those last two things. I feel that over the last couple years, I've managed to hurt many people and upset many others. At one time there was nobody who I disliked beyond redemption, and that is no longer true. At one time I was able to do what made me happy without hurting others. I'm not saying everything I do hurts someone, I'm just saying I've hurt a lot more people than I'd ever wanted or intended to, and that's something that bothers me deeply.

Also, over the last six months or so, I've been unable to sustain my own happiness. This is partially because I'm poor, and there's nothing I can do about that. However, lack of resources is not the only reason. There are other factors, like the fact that many people I once considered the best of friends now no longer trust me or spend as much time with me because I took so much for granted and hurt so many with what seemed like the same mistakes.

I don't know all the factors for either of these problems. Surely the pressure of my ever-pending graduation from college is one. Obviously the fact that I'm too poor to chase my dreams is another.... But the point is, I'd like to find a way to be the man I thought I was again.

Why don't I write this crap on paper?