kung fu grippe

Just you.

Anyone who does THAT dance to THAT song is never, under any circumstances, EVER a jackass.

[Everybody go read that; It’s very cool.]

Thanks, for this, my friend. SO super-nice of you to share this. Means a lot to me.

Truth is, I’ve got a weirdly thick skin for most of the blunter electronic darts, and, as with nuclear war, genital warts, and doomed engagements, you only really have to worry about my feelings when I stop talking about them.

Still, thank you. Very very much.

But, yes. Just as a human art project, I’ll admit that I love the opportunity to try my hand at aping someone else’s attack-mode persona if that’s the game of Stratego they’ve elected to crack open. I’m no Monteiro, but, sure, I do like getting my troll on as much as the next guy.

All that said:

As long as I’ve nailed together this little soapbox, I will take a minute to share two bits of absolute jackass arrogance that I will own from nose to butt — and which I will recommend to any of my pals reading this in the event that it appeals. Just a couple unmerited swatches of unpopular, unstarrable, unfavoriteable self-confidence that will render you permanently incapable of ever being universally fake-admired. So, caveat emptor:

Remember you’re only as good as you never let strangers talk you out of being.
You’re the only one who gets to decide what’s “good” and who’s “a stranger.”

Parse that how you like, but I’ve both seen and dispensed enough unbelievable and unnecessary stupidity to know that, when it comes down the to the coffins and the floral arrangements, you will not get to do a rebuttal, you will not get to clarify yourself via a sober DM, and you will not get to copyedit whatever your black-suited survivors decide to put into that obit they threw together on deadline. Those are all people who — love you though they did — each has their own story, their own perception, and their own things to keep on doing long after you’re well and truly gone. Sorry, carbon balls. That’s how this story ends.

So, all we really have are these days here doing these things that we do. And the more things we try to do for more people in more places, the more likely it is that we’ll each find ourselves at odds with one or more of the folks around us. Sometimes for good reasons. Sometimes for bad reasons. Almost all of the time for no reason at all. That’s just how it is. It’s a junior high cafeteria and choosing to always pack a healthy and nutritious lunch is no bulwark against the inevitable food fights.

The thing I try to keep in mind — and that I certainly fail at in one way or another almost daily — is that who you decide you are and what you decide you’re doing today trumps every opinion, regardless of raw tonnage, page rank, or motherfucking follower count. All. On. You.¹

We mustn’t rely on the poll numbers and hourly emoticon counts to tell us whether we’re on the right track. It’s nice to be liked, but, especially as you get older, it’s really, really nice to be yourself. All the time. As often as you can stand.

This does NOT mean you can’t evolve, can’t be wrong, can’t be apologetic, can’t be sympathetic, can’t be sentimental, or can’t be any thing you choose. Contrary to astoundingly popular opinion, being yourself — really yourself — means you embrace the endless and chaotic number of options that avalanche into your life when you stop pretending you’re a professionally-printed poster.

And it happily, maddeningly happens every time you accept whatever the fuck you are without yielding to the persistent need to persuade everyone around you that you’re actually them. Unless, of course, that’s who you truly want to be.

So, yes. If you want to be a better human, I say, do it. If you want to be nicer and kinder and more cognizant of the tragedy in Haiti and the injustices in Iran and the travails of Conan O’Brien, go do it. Do it all. Do it, do it, do it.

But, YOU do it. You.

And don’t sweat whether I like it or not. Whether they like it or not. Our opinion doesn’t fucking matter. Remember? This is you. Living, here you. That’s all you got, my friend.

Anyhow. I gotta go play fire trucks with my kid, but I do want you — my happy band of brothers — to know that I am genuinely (really and non-persona-ly) grateful that so many of you are my pals and, yes, supporters and fans. It means a lot to me. Yes, me.

On a podcast the other day, I was bemoaning the way things like Google and Facebook have helped create a disincentive to leveraging the web’s traditional role as a place to just try things on. Used to be, there was way less obsession over “personal brand” and consistency and never saying anything that even potentially contradicted anything you’d said somewhere else. And, I miss that. It was easier to be weird. It was easier to be yourself. Even or especially if you were fucked up. ↩

Source: merlin