Humble Pie

I've been feeling like a bit of a dud lately. We all have personae that we try to live by so as to be not totally interchangeable with everyone else. I used to believe that I was (1) the smart one and (2) the edgy one. I'm not that edgy anymore, and post-grades, I started to realize that I'm not as smart as I thought. Others are way quicker than me way more effortlessly. Evaluating this fact along with my previous self-proclaimed edgy persona, I wondered if I wasn't essentially like the Star Wars/comic book/computer geek who mutters in the corner about how he's surrounded by idiots - while the geek himself is shunned for his unappreciated superiority.

The following night - after I scoffed at someone's suggestion that I just embrace my new persona and start playing WOW - I sat at a dinner party with one such geek. He was talking about a practitioner of the underground vampire, or Luciferian, culture. Buffy the Vampire Slayer inevitably made its way into the conversation, thus establishing a nexus (or cementing my bond?) with the subculture geek. That was a little disconcerting, but not nearly as much as when I learned that this subculture geek got a book prize (top 8%) last semester.

Even the geek who "delusionally" thinks he's better than everyone else was able to deliver, where I had failed.