{"id":248,"date":"2005-10-10T19:25:10","date_gmt":"2005-10-11T00:25:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-10-10T19:25:10","modified_gmt":"2005-10-11T00:25:10","slug":"fool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=248","title":{"rendered":"fool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I sit down and I look at myself and I realize &#8220;God, I&#8217;m such a fool.&#8221;    What am I doing out here in California?  I&#8217;d like to tell myself I&#8217;m following some sort of dream.  What dream?   What dream am I capable of realizing?  It rarely comes, but occasionally I can see with clarity that the answer is nothing.  Today was one of those days. <\/p>\n<p>My whole life I&#8217;ve been overachieving (or at least trying to) only to hide the fact that I&#8217;m an idiot.    Because of this, my stupidy takes form in unique and painful ways.   The last few weeks I&#8217;ve been thinking that I should try to be an extra in a movie or tv show or something just for fun.   In hindsight I don&#8217;t know what I was thinking, they rarely have a role called &#8220;ugly short guy.&#8221;  To drive the point home I now have huge red spotty things all over my neck making it look like I have herpes or something.   That put my ego right back to where it belongs in a jiffy.<\/p>\n<p>I move to California and call people from the beach in the winter and brag about it like an asshole.  Then I get a sunburn worse than I&#8217;ve had in my whole life to where my back is still sensitive months later.   <\/p>\n<p>To my close friends I&#8217;m known as a sarcastic asshole at best.  Why do I do this?   I do nice things for my friends now not out of compassion but out of guilt from all the mean things I&#8217;ve done, which they&#8217;ve only repaid with kindness.<\/p>\n<p>I made my best friend give me rent money when he visited me for a week in college.  I can&#8217;t believe he still talks to me, let alone sends birthday\/Christmas gifts. <\/p>\n<p>I got a cell phone plan with the least amount of minutes so I could save money.  The trade-off was that I couldn&#8217;t call Amy much (which hurt her feelings).  So, now that I really need to call her &#8211; I don&#8217;t have my phone because I left it at her house when I was there Saturday&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>I stayed with a girl for three years that made me choose between her and my friends and family, and then would put me last on her list every time.   I&#8217;m lucky I still had any friends left after it was over.<\/p>\n<p>Then I finally do meet a girl that puts me first on her list (or pretty high anyway) and I can&#8217;t even bother to tell her how I feel about her, which is the only thing she ever asked for in return.   Instead I just took her for granted and convinced myself I didn&#8217;t need her.  Well, now I realize I do, but intelligent and attractive young women don&#8217;t need to have anything to do with ugly cheap guys that live in bad neighborhoods, so I have to be really careful from now on.    That is, if it isn&#8217;t too late already\u2026 <\/p>\n<p>A janitor that knows he&#8217;ll always be a janitor is a better happier person than someone who has delusions of grandeur.    I need to wake up and &#8220;get real,&#8221; the trouble is \u2013 I&#8217;ve been living someone else&#8217;s life the whole time, so I have no idea who I really am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I sit down and I look at myself and I realize &#8220;God, I&#8217;m such a fool.&#8221; What am I doing out here in California? I&#8217;d like to tell myself I&#8217;m following some sort of dream. What dream? What dream am I capable of realizing? It rarely comes, but occasionally I can see with clarity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}