"I heard that manic depressives are naturally better writers. When they are manic, they write, write, write. When they are depressed, they become the harsh critics of their own writing, and edit, edit, edit. So their natural polarity makes their writings better."

For the things you don't like about yourself, naturally you make more comparisons with other people just to lucidate your inadequacy, and the shape of inadequacy only gets uglier and uglier.

But action and change is hard, to know how to change or what to change is difficult, not to mention the immense effort it requires. So do not take action to change, and rather just feel bad about the inadequacy until you decide to ignore it wholly, or comes to terms with some smart argument.

But they won't ever disappear. Other people will remind you. You will remind yourself. There are certain things that life seems to call for. The thing I feel like I should be doing. The thing that feels correct. These are things that, ironically, happen to be the best exercise for me, because I come up with elaborate explanations and excuses to refute the whole idea. Reversal of arguments, feigning knowledgeability, a sophistry of sort. But these certain things never will disappear and will one day like today tear off and burn down the thicket of smart arguments I have. Then there will be no excuses, like the last time this happened. Take option 1, ignore the perpetual problem and deal with the present. It might just be something I don't like, but not necessarily should change. It might be wiser to come to terms with it. Repeat until feeling better. Repeat again when the ugly inadequacy reveals itself and subverts the serene surface of the reservoir of consciousness and morality.

But it could be otherwise. It could be that I should take the bitter medicine, face the horror like you used to long time ago, and rejoice in learning and overcoming. The ugliness only worsens if not dealt with. Changes are slow but sweet. They are the small berries from day to next, the small motivation accumulating that causes changes.

Both of these are arguments come and go, take turns and switch, as the mood frequency hits its apex and falls to its trough. I love myself, I hate myself, my life is great, my life is undeserving. A perennial vicious cycle that gets less vicious every time, because I learn how to be less affected by it as well as become better at move on and not get bogged down. That's one thing I'm good at, becoming more constant.

Never upset. Always conceding. Mostly happy. Rarely a downer.

If you give enough time, this trick itself goes under scrutiny. The fact that I'm more stable is great, no it sucks I'm just being lazy, it must be my natural temperament, no it is being practiced excessively, excessively. And it tears down my mechanism of defense, knocks on my door and tells me,

Shape of happiness that breeds unhappiness or affects further gains is an incomplete one. Nothing but a few things are 'who you are', everything is at best 'who you are now' and it being a temporal symptom, you cannot use it as the unchanging basis point. If you do, then you will become stagnant, weighed down with its own set of burdensome excuses, drowning. Most things are just 'what you feel like doing', and such inclinations are not 'who you are' but simply distractions, 'who you could become'. As I said, only few things are 'who you are', and such is when the soul is arranged properly with what was there and what was found. Keep on searching. Go out and find things to align your soul.

"He used to get really upset about feminism and stuff. He was angry that he could never possibly be a true feminist, given that he is a male, grown up in a certain way, and whatnot. He would be depressed, he would stay in bed, just distracting himself from the bad mood." No will to be productive or anything. There was no creativity engendered by pain. There just was pain. It wasn't a helpful disease.

"I was jealous that he could feel so passionate."

Nosce te ipsum.

Mothagesso.