Having split identities- I'm a lazy man. A lazy, lazy, etc. It's not so much that I hate physically doing things as it is that I hate devoting mental exertion to thinking about how to do things. As such, one of the more irksome points in my life as a post-college resource-hog has been the need to create a "professional" image for myself in the workplace. Immediately after graduation, I think I took a lot of appropriate steps: I bought some ties, I cut the dried semen and whiskey out of my hair, I started bathing regularly. I even took down the Myspace where I pretended to be a girl in order to disappoint local perverts and, hopefully, confuse them on a profoundly personal level. As soon as a company hired me, I put my facade into practice. I began showing up for work on time, in neat dress, and with a kind, unassuming smile. By all accounts, I seemed a perfectly pleasant, well-adjusted young man. The illusion was complete.Unfortunately, my work persona falls in direct conflict with the way I prefer to live my life on my own time. I hate waking up before 10am. I hate wearing sensible colors and clothes that don't cling tight enough to show the outline of my balls. Showering, and washing my hair in particular, makes me want to shake with such titanic fits of rage that I was briefly employed as an eco-friendly paint mixer. I also hate being nice to people who are mean, listening to boring stories, and making coffee for strangers. This creates a disconnect, then, between my personal and professional selves. Which was fine for a time. I went to work as one person, got through 9 hours of that, metamorphosed back into my real self through a baptism of rage on the drive home, and was ready to be fun and sassy for the evening.
Except cracks have started to show. Sometimes at work I slip up and imply that I might still be drunk, or make lewd, aggressively homosexual innuendos around people I think it might bother, or suggest how much I would like to light someone's house on fire. Worse yet, sometimes my Labor Face slips out in my personal life. I find myself organizing my money to make sure the bills are all facing the same way, or accidentally putting on the television and being boring and white all night.
Which might not even be so disastrous if I then didn't have to factor in online personae as well. How do I maintain a mental division when I also have to take the effort to sign onto message boards and be a condescending know-it-all? Or log into a Steam gamer tag and be so purposefully obtuse yet such a good shot that I give the impression of being some sort of mute, idiot-savant? This double-triple-quadruple life is tearing me apart.
And yet at the same time, I kind of love...
Getting away with it- There's some sort of sick, double-agent appeal to knowing that I can be such a bastard at certain times of the day, and such a goody-goody at others, and pass successfully as both. And every time a slip between the two goes unnoticed, whether it's forgetting to shower here or singing off-color songs under my breath there, it feels great. Like I shoulda been an actor, or low-level, local politician. I suppose this could all be a normal part of the "adult" life I'm still adapting to. Either way, I think I'll be okay as long as I manage to avoid any major screw-ups. Like going into work with a flamethrower looking to play capture the flag. Or coming home and issuing loans to my neighbors. Or logging into Team Fortress and failing to be taken seriously as a writer.
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