Patting yourself on the back

Let me start this one off by patting myself on the back for sticking to at least one resolution for a week. That's right. This is a fucking jubilee. A week of blogging. Yay me. Well done, Rikster. Now keep it up.

There.

As embarrassing as that was to do semi-publicly, I had to. It's one of the things I'm learning. It's part of growing up. Self-parenting if you will. Patting yourself on the back is nothing to be ashamed of, he told himself sternly. I won't bother you with it too much anymore, at least not as explicitly as I did there, but I'll be doing plenty of it in my head. I'll be doing it when I find a job, I'll be doing it when I finish a blog post, I'll be doing it when I climb back on stage for another open mic, I'll be doing it when I help someone out, I'll be doing it when I manage to get out of bed before noon (8 am this morning. Great job, Rik!) and I'll be doing it when I actively engage in a conversation. (Another resolution. I'll get into that in another post.)

You see patting yourself on the back is something that's frowned upon both in the world I was brought up in (a middle class world of catholic Flemish hardworking suburbians, chronically frightened of sticking out against the grey background they dwelt in) and in the world I tried to flee to and define myself by as a teenager (defiant anti-ambitious generation x-ers using integrity as an excuse to psychologically self-destruct). Neither the priests in my high school that were supposed to teach me morals, nor Kurt Cobain who became my hero, felt that is was appropriate to blow your own trumpet. Not even (or maybe even especially) to yourself, in your head. We're all finding out about the supposed morality of catholic priests, and we all know how mister Cobain ended up.

So I'm learning. And that's another resolution I'm sticking to.

Good boy.

(Thanks)

Here's a picture I took of a close encounter I had with a tarpon in Mexico.

Cool picture!

I know, right?