An exceptionally self-centered blog post (redundancy?) in which personality faults will be discussed openly (admirable) and without shame (despicable).

If you are reading this, then you know me well, so it may seem that several of the things I point out are obvious; you might feel insulted. However, one of my least favorite human flaws is our wish to be understood without having to explain ourselves. This wish is based on the fact that if someone understands you without you having had to explain yourself then they are paying a certain degree of attention to you.

Oh, how we love attention. The human love of attention has its root in selfishness. More than the average human being, I deplore attention whoring. You should prepare yourself for confusion, because I am now going to discuss how selfish I am - and how unashamed of it I am. The explanation for this apparent contradiction begins with a distinction I believe in; there are two sorts of selfishness: dependent selfishness and independent selfishness. So while I am unashamedly independently selfish, I simultaneously harbor a high degree of resentment towards the dependently selfish.

Some of you might have noticed a change in my behavior. One simplifying summary (apparently I dig redundancy today) of this change might be that I have become less cool / more of a jerk / less sensitive towards the feelings of others. So you are now in an unpleasant situation where a friend has changed into someone who you would not have befriended. You may be wondering if it is your friendly duty to ignore the change and be a source of support while I work through some sort of personal trial from which I will return more awesome than ever before. Or, worse yet, I have actually decided to be a jerk, and now you are stuck with having to explain to people why Ben doesn't do stuff with us anymore.

The latter is the case.

I tell all of you this in order to absolve you of possible guilt. You might have been wishing that I was not part of your life any longer, but not removing me because of the confusion mentioned above. Though I would be much aggrieved at losing any of you, I have violated the contractual terms of friendship. I have done it knowingly and have no intentions of making reparations. Which is a silly way of saying I don't even feel bad.

***

Theoretically I could have lost each one of you there and now be typing to a non-existent audience. So now I am going to get _really_ self involved.

I am very simple. For as long as I can remember, any one of my actions could be explained by one of only three motivations: Attract a mate; make something awesome; have fun. You could argue that these things are so general that they could describe anyone. Breaking 'make something awesome' into specifics that apply to me results in 'make an awesome piece of computer generated entertainment'. Breaking 'have fun' into specifies that apply to me results in 'play games (tabletop, sport, video)'.

The important part of that is that if I was involved in a social activity that was not playing a game of some form, it was indirectly motivated by either attracting a mate or making something. People who have no social lives are often referred to as 'losers'. Losers are not attractive. I had a social life because I needed to not be a loser. I don't like people.

So what caused the change? Over the past couple years I came to the realization that my physical qualities were not the weak link of my mate-attraction combo. It is, in fact, my personality that is my barrier. So I was presented with two options: change or quit. Oddly those changes of which you are aware, are the result of quitting.

New Ben is just Old Ben with one less motivator.