Kyle came and visited me at work today which, despite his incendiary remarks, was a delightful break in my 8 1/2 hours of Kmart blah.

After I got done working, I sat outside with Tania for half an hour while she was on her lunch, and she said some really nice things about me, all of which I felt were genuine. And that's kind of a rare thing for me because usually when people compliment me, I just think it's a bunch of situation-appropriate bullshit that is more or less empty, which is rooted in my own perception of myself. A perception which, I might add, I only recently realized was incredibly self-defeating. It has also only recently occurred to me that it is not utterly narcississtic to think of myself as not being half-bad or to fairly acknowledge my strengths. It seems natural that there would be a gray area between self-deprecation and vanity; however, it is an area that I have ignored, and I think it might be time to wander into this no man's land. I think it's good to demand something from myself, but I might get more accomplished if I didn't always perceive myself as being a failure.

On an unrelated note (perhaps), I ran into the previously mentioned woman from Collins. And I mean this literally. It was one of those weird situations in which two people are simultaneously attempting to pass through the same door from different directions, resulting in a human collision. I made her stutter and blush. And while I'm still inclined to think that any part of me that is drawn to her is done so out of a sort of desperation, this blushing and stuttering made me feel very good about myself.

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