05/01/07 - 1:02 a.m.

It's weird being free.

After five years. This web page captures that whole cycle.

But my "over-disclipined" personality, during those years, probably preceded the hard times of joblessness. I'd been working around this fear of being yelled at by strangers -- or the fear of the universal rejection it implied. You could probably trace the roots of that to when we moved when I was younger. Or a bad relationship with my father. But it's something I should probably get over.

You know what's funny? For a while I really was trying to get in touch with myself, when I was much younger. Guess there's only one thing to do: go back to doing that again.

Then the whole thing about strangers won't have this enormous, inflated perspective.