Unspecialized

Last evening I went to The Hap­py Dog with Lou and Was­co and ran into the usu­al indie rock crowd of folks. I like the Hap­py Dog, it’s nice and open and the island-bar was pret­ty cool too. Play­ing were Bri­an Straw, Good Morn­ing Valen­tine [who’s CD release this show was cel­e­brat­ing] and Mike Uva with Hook­boy. The music was real­ly nice and I real­ly liked Good Morn­ing Valen­tine’s sound. I had to bail ear­ly though since I’m at work by 7am.

I might be cre­at­ing phan­tom issues for myself but I’m still hav­ing trou­ble find­ing a group of folks in Cleve­land with whom I fit in well. I wish I could regain the sense of ease I had with my high school bud­dies, but that might only be a sit­u­a­tion that exists in high school. I sup­pose I should be past that now, since it was 8 years ago. I always feel like I’m either too old or too young or not enough into what­ev­er scene I’m at to fit in. Some places are more com­fort­able than oth­ers, but still unful­fill­ing in some way that I can’t quite pin down.

My “defi­cien­cy self” is like­ly what is talk­ing here. I used to take pride in my lack of spe­cial­ty. I can play a lit­tle music, write a lit­tle, cook a bit, do a bit of web design, do a bit of handy­man work, and think alot. From a prag­mat­ic stand­point, this isn’t very effec­tive cap­i­tal in mod­ern soci­ety. Jobs want cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and spe­cif­ic expe­ri­enced skill sets, being part of the indie scene or elec­tron­ic scene or art scene or web scene demands a cer­tain amount of in-depth inter­est and con­for­mi­ty that I just don’t care enough about to acquire. My old mot­to that “I’m inter­est­ed in every­thing peo­ple are inter­est­ed in.” is prob­a­bly mis­word­ed. I think the cor­rect ver­sion is “I’m inter­est­ed in peo­ple who are inter­est­ed in things.”

While writ­ing this, I’ve real­ized that I am def­i­nite­ly caus­ing my own prob­lem here. The unspe­cial­iza­tion might be a con­tribut­ing fac­tor, but it isn’t the main cause. I want to have some good friends with whom I feel at ease and fit in with. Yet, I’m unable to make myself suf­fi­cient­ly inter­est­ed in a par­tic­u­lar extant group to become a part of it. I’m basi­cal­ly ask­ing the world to bend to my will instead of act­ing in a man­ner that will allow me to appre­ci­ate each sit­u­a­tion for what it offers. Per­haps if I work at that appre­ci­a­tion and use it as per­son­al change-agent ener­gy, I’ll be able to be a bet­ter friend to oth­ers.