Disclosure

I think enough people know my real identity that I could not care less about being anonymous now. Anonymity hasn't furthered my cause in any way that I know of, in any case. Who likes talking to anonymous people who drone on and on about issues when they don't reveal enough about themselves to let others know why they talk about such issues? Nobody cares who I am and given how I write, I won't get sued anytime in the foreseeable future.

So. It has been said in my profile for some time now that I am a social work student. That is true. I am, however, a part-time social work student. In my normal daily hours I work. I work as a very little cog in a very large machine. I enjoy my paid work very much. Occasionally I get upset with the futility of being a very little cog in the very large machine, but on those days I remember I like my salary, if little else. Such upset phases often pass as unremarkably as they came, after some diddling and talks with the boss and colleagues, and I enjoy my work again. It is work of the type I can think about 24/7 and make some progress on, anytime 24/7.

As a very little cog in a very large machine I am, as I have said, part of a very large machine. I write this now because I have been doing a great deal of 'very large machine' work that I hope will further my little cog career, into a medium-sized cog perhaps. All is going well, but I am restless. I am restless that I am only doing things that will further my little cog career. This slavery to the 'cog'-ness of it all, the insistence that if I think this and do this I will get that (and I will be safe, because people say so), quite simply drives me up the wall if I do it for a long time without break, and I get itchy and rebellious. I want to be all aspects of me. The longer the denial, the more independent critical thinking I crave to do. So I talk.

I examine the things that matter to me on a larger scale. I cogitate on the Cognitive Dissonance blog (argh, stopstop). Love matters to me, as do hope and faith and the ability to define one's own path. Empathy and altruism matter to me. And you, who are reading this, matter to me. Because if you did not matter to me, I would not be writing this on a public medium. If you did not matter to me at all, if I did not care about you at all, I would be a happy little silent cog, content to be one, living in a bubble world pursuing my cog path. Content to be one day a medium-sized cog, and then a larger cog. But that is not my nature, I could never be happy that way. And so, perhaps, if you are like me, I want you to know that you are not alone, first. And that you will not die if you speak your mind.