One year since I started this. Just thought I'd mention that - I have no introspective "How have I changed?"/ "What have I achieved?" dialogues planned, just the fact alone. A while ago I thought of revisiting my New Year's Resolutions on here for a public evaluation of my integrity, but decided against it due to the fact that to do so seems rather formulaic and predictable. Suffice it to say that, even as my own most spiteful and damaging critic, I am confident that I have followed up on most of the list, save eating less meat and not picking my nose in public. Oh, slap my wrists...
I've been thinking a little too much recently about how (I imagine) other people perceive me, particularly in comparison to the way I perceive myself. When I think like this, I am reminded of a scene in Godard's Le Petit Soldat (I watched this film as a part of my French course at University, though regrettably I didn't pay much attention to it, aside from this particular scene of course), in which the protagonist looks at himself in the mirror for an extended period of time, periodically covering his eyes, then uncovering them, then recovering them. He is assessing, not without a sense of bewilderment, the gulf of difference between how he looks and how he feels.
I guess people do this kind of thing all the time, most notably when they are scrolling through photographs and linger on the ones in which they feature. This isn't necessarily narcissism: true, it is a fascination with how we appear, or even sometimes the fact that we appear at all, but this is because we are not accustomed to a third-person perspective of oursleves.
There's a fine line between insecurity and vanity: let my accusors think what they like, but I need this to make me feel good.
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