Week of 15-21 July (preface)

Homework.

Wow, I haven't not done that since 1987.

I don't make it a habit of patting myself on the back. I'm sure it has something to do with my own physical limitations which prevent me from adequately reaching it. Well, that, or the fact that the concept of doing unto myself as I would have others do to me always felt slightly akin to emotional masturbation.

I tend to simultaneously see both ends of the spectrum of value, the benefits and disadvantages, attributed to each of my more defining characteristics. Admittedly I allow the weight of fatigue, despair, and the expectation of failure to bias my self-perception toward the negative, which, though clearly an unrealistic paradigm, has become somewhat of a comfortable discomfort zone for me. Predictability is such a rare and precious commodity, and it is afforded to me en masse in my psychic cocoon.

Whether I am mistaken or not, I do not know, but I associate potential with responsibility, in that an emphasis on a personal quality connotes an obligation to employ it in a manner becoming of a person so graciously doted.
Perhaps in shifting my focus toward those aspects of the traits that could be easily argued as possible negatives I'm attempting to flee from my own manufactured presumption of duty.

Perhaps I should undertake this quest as more of an examination of the fallacies of my current methods of self analysis rather than seeking to line my inner child's forehead with the gold star stickers of positive self-reinforcement and affirmation.

In the interest of shifting my perspective onto these depression-obscured attributes I will, for the sake of the assigned exercise, and out of respect for its assignor, attempt to look upon them without prejudice, as might a disinterested third party, as I list them.