Bryan’s Ramblings

It’s been so long since I last did, I feel almost compelled to write something here, and since I at least feel like I have a lot to say, I guess I’ll give it a go. Since I was somewhat unsure of my topic, I thought the easy way to go was with “My New Year’s Resolutions this year are…” or at least “What I learned in 2006 was…” However, I will do neither of those because I have resolved this year to have no specific resolutions and in truth I think I learned very little in 2006 that I didn’t already know in 2005.

So, instead, I’m going to write about opinions. I’m not necessarily talking about my own opinions right now – just opinions in general. Where do they come from and what good are they? I guess opinions probably stem from all kinds of places. Parents are a pretty good starting point for opinions. When you’re little, you have very few opinions of your own and they are mostly reflected by what your parents believe, I think. I imagine this follows you around for much of your life, but at some point (college?) you start to form your own opinions too. Where these come from I’m not sure. Probably friends and maybe even teachers influence these opinions, but a lot of it is probably based on your personality too, which your parents are at least indirectly responsible for as well.

I’ve always considered myself to be a very opinionated person, and I generally have no trouble sharing what opinions I do have. Unfortunately, I don’t know where most of my own opinions stem from…they just form automatically it seems. Sometimes I have good arguments to back them up, sometimes I don’t. I’ve certainly written about quite a few of my opinions here in this space, but it’s pretty safe to do so here because no one can really challenge them. They can leave comments, but I have to approve those, so it’s not really a dialogue so much. I definitely prefer it this way. I’ve also found that as I get older, my opinions grow weaker and weaker and I have fewer and fewer of them in general. Of course as you age I imagine your opinions change drastically anyway, and the things you care about inevitably are not the same as they once were.

I used to think I’d be a good lawyer. Since I have always had strong opinions, I always seemed to be a good arguer. Plus, I have a knack for not listening to other’s opinions, flatly disagreeing with them, or denying they have any merit at all. Except, I don’t think I’d be a very good lawyer any more. For the most part now, I’m apathetic, and a lot of times if I argue it’s almost for the sake of argument, or because I’m defending an opinion I’ve just always had and never really thought about changing as I grew, so to speak. I’ll even often pose a question that I don’t have an answer to and then choose the opposite side of what the group chose as a sort of devil’s advocate thing, but I’m just not even very good at that any more. I get frazzled and my facts or arguments just suck. I don’t know when I stopped being good at this. In some ways I think I’ve gotten dumber; or maybe the world has gotten smarter; or maybe I haven’t kept up; or maybe I just don’t care as much any more. I really don’t know, but it’s awfully frustrating and I’m considering just never sharing my opinions at all and just agreeing with everyone all the time. That’s not appealing to me either though, because I hate people that are like that generally.

On top of all of this, I feel like I don’t really know people who share my opinions with me as much as I used to. Sure, my parents, my sister, my girlfriend, my closest friends, these kinds of people generally agree with most things I think, but it sometimes feels like I have no allies any more. In my youth, everyone close to me just always seemed to have the same thoughts as I did. I don’t know if I just only recently found people who challenge me or if I am just hanging around the wrong people. I think it’s probably the former, but being challenged and seeming clueless shouldn’t feel the same, I don’t think, but maybe they do. It seems like my whole spectrum of opinions are constantly being challenged, from musical theater taste to political beliefs. I sometimes feel like I have no where to turn where people will just support me regardless. That’s a pretty shitty feeling.

In truth, I’m probably over-dramatizing much of this for the sake of self-therapy, self-reflection, and to make this a bit more entertaining, not only to read, but to write. However, I definitely do feel more alone in my world of opinions than I ever have before in my life, and I guess I’m looking at the fresh start of a year to try to figure out how to either fix that or deal with it. I’ve said that I think 2007 is going to be a fabulous year. I don’t know why, but I just feel like it’s really going to be my year. I have nothing to back that up of course. It’s just my opinion.