Rich people piss me off.

They do. And I don't mean that to diss people that have money because they've worked for it--actually, I do on some level, because it is people like them who contribute to the longevity of the myth that capitalism equals happiness and well, that's a whole nother blog entry.

But I guess what really pisses me off about most rich people, on the whole, is that they are ignorant in points of view and to me, if we're going to assign numerical values to peoples' worths, being rich starts one out, ironically enough, in the red. Most rich people I have met--including but not limited to 75% of U.T. students--are not rich because they ever worked or had ambition or drive. They are rich because that wealth has existed in their family for generations. Now some people may try to present the argument "someone had to work for that money", which might be very true; in that case, go Grandpa. Congratulations for beating the system and putting your family at an unfair advantage for centuries to come.

I think part of the positive aspect of the idea of "earning" is the idea that one has to cross barriers and actually ascend for sometime before reaching the top; that is, he or she must see the light teasing him or her through layers of waste and then at various points in the air before reaching the fabled top in order to truly appreciate the glory of the photons dancing when they do so just inches from their nose.

And that just doesn't happen.

Anyway, I start off bitching because it seems that's what I do best. I'm in sort of a trough I guess you could say; a lot of what I thought I had going for me a week, a day, even a few hours ago seems to be decaying and fossilizing before my very eyes, and I'm trying to cope with that. As such, I'm in kind of an introspective mood and kind of trying to analyze myself. I realize I complain a lot. Way too much for my own good. And I always try to use the argument that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and I've been squeaking for a long time and gotten a lot of grease so I guess that's true enough, but I don't know. I know that this proverbial noise is my calling in life, that I will acheive what I will come to think of as success by virtue of my calling out, but it saddens me that I may have to alienate many people in the process.

Two years ago, if someone had told me I was too loud, I probably would have listened, and sulked around saying nothing, doing nothing, just watching observing. In fact, four years ago at a party in honor of an exam that I scored the highest on out of an entire class, I told my instructor, in hopes of gaining some sort of approval that my excellent score could never get me, that I was going to change from the loud, opinionated child I was into some kind of observant, introverted reporter.

The more I think about it, though, it becomes clear: I am generally right, and not necessarily in the sense of the word that everyone tends to use. But everything meaningful I've ever achieved in my life has been by sticking to my guns, which is not to say that I might not try to gradually more fairly evaluate targets of my rants or focus more on what I'm saying then necessarily how long I saw, but my eccentricies are all that separate me, on an ether level, from anyone else, and I am not one to blend in. They say woman who wear chartreuse are remembered more than those who wear white, and if I'm not screaming in a crowded room, I probably won't be heard.

But there is still a part of me I have yet to train that acceptance is not everything, although I've proven time and time again that I can go any road alone by virtue of ambition, and I guess it's not even the loneliness that irks me.

The thing that bothers me is that I can see the decay. I am never surprised when someone tells me they are through with me, they are done, even when they try to be covert and seem like they say something to me right away because it's "not their thing" to let a problem go on without hopes of hurting someone. An inoculation does not hurt if you cannot see the needle--at least that's what they tell you when you're ten and getting a tetanus shot, the needle of which is the size of your forearm at that point--but if you get a chance to size up that needle, to really become cognizant of the pain before you feel it, then it hurts twice as bad.

Which is why I am all of a sudden bruised.