Your teen years were much more eventful than mine -- I worked a full-time job as soon as I could get one (16) so I could have money to build stuff with. This kept me mostly away from knives and teen drama, and I was fine with this. My early years were so full of distress and emotional upheaval, that a structurally simple, predictable routine was a shelter of sorts. It wasn't fun, but it was stable and safe. I rationed my chaos carefully, in deliberate doses, so it would never overwhelm me.
It amuses me the import you put in WHFS. For me the radio station was WGTB, Georgetown University's college radio station. It was here I heard my first Ramones, my first Devo, it was where I first heard "Rock Lobster." The Station got sanitized in 1979, and I turned to WHFS which was always my backup station (the signal was ass in Rockville until the moved their transmitter to Annapolis). By the mid-eighties, most of the fun had been scrubbed from the station accept for Zoltar (The Brother From Another Planet), and Neecie, both with very late shows. After the Einsteins sold the station, and the new owners refined their polished, play list driven college-radio-lite sound, I lost interest.
There is no group out there. There was no group, not for me.
I feel this way also. I never feel like I fit in, and I'm fine with that. I think of myself as a group of one and from time to time, my group of one intersects with other groups, we have a fine time, and until the next time, I take my group of one and go home. I think part of the problem I have with feeling like I fit in is I do not perform the mental trick most people do where they internally supress the realization of differences between themselves and others in a group, meaning they create an internal homogenization that makes it easier to create an instant sense of community. Another way of putting it is I do not do groupthink willingly.
I think friends and circles and groups are the most ephemeral of things. Some people put such emotional investment in their friends and circles, but circumstances have to shift in only the most modest directions to blow away even what was thought of as the strongest of bonds. All it can take is a new job, a marriage, a break up, the birth of a child, an illness or injury, financial distress, or even something as random saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Not looking clearly at the temporary nature of human bonds, not accepting it as it is without any comforting fictions, can lead to all sorts of personal devastation and emotional hell. Perhaps if I accepted some comforting fictions as reality, I might feel less social dislocation, but if I did this then I would feel an internal dislocation with myself.
no subject
It amuses me the import you put in WHFS. For me the radio station was WGTB, Georgetown University's college radio station. It was here I heard my first Ramones, my first Devo, it was where I first heard "Rock Lobster." The Station got sanitized in 1979, and I turned to WHFS which was always my backup station (the signal was ass in Rockville until the moved their transmitter to Annapolis). By the mid-eighties, most of the fun had been scrubbed from the station accept for Zoltar (The Brother From Another Planet), and Neecie, both with very late shows. After the Einsteins sold the station, and the new owners refined their polished, play list driven college-radio-lite sound, I lost interest.
There is no group out there. There was no group, not for me.
I feel this way also. I never feel like I fit in, and I'm fine with that. I think of myself as a group of one and from time to time, my group of one intersects with other groups, we have a fine time, and until the next time, I take my group of one and go home. I think part of the problem I have with feeling like I fit in is I do not perform the mental trick most people do where they internally supress the realization of differences between themselves and others in a group, meaning they create an internal homogenization that makes it easier to create an instant sense of community. Another way of putting it is I do not do groupthink willingly.
I think friends and circles and groups are the most ephemeral of things. Some people put such emotional investment in their friends and circles, but circumstances have to shift in only the most modest directions to blow away even what was thought of as the strongest of bonds. All it can take is a new job, a marriage, a break up, the birth of a child, an illness or injury, financial distress, or even something as random saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Not looking clearly at the temporary nature of human bonds, not accepting it as it is without any comforting fictions, can lead to all sorts of personal devastation and emotional hell. Perhaps if I accepted some comforting fictions as reality, I might feel less social dislocation, but if I did this then I would feel an internal dislocation with myself.