Sorry for the confusion

I decided that at least a couple of people were owed a direct apology, so I got back on to OKCupid long enough to write it:

I dropped out of sight rather abruptly, and I felt that a few people, including you, deserved some kind of explanation.

One thing I've learned from this experience is that a person can write a self-description that is factually correct, entirely accurate, with 90-day-old pictures, and is still in some vague way dishonest.

I did not set out to deliberately deceive anyone. But the first person I fooled was myself, and once that happened, others were bound to be pulled in as well.

The profile I started with here was fairly straightforward and vanilla. Then I tweaked, edited, cut-and-pasted, and finally realized that my profile, while entertaining, was more the man I wish I were than the man I actually am.

I know this is what everyone does. We all want to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, as the song says. But I feel like I crossed a line along the way.

Anyway, there's a guy out there who sort of resembles this zenidiot person, and that guy is me. But zenidiot himself is probably as much gloss as reality.

Sorry for the confusion.

mcarp
sort of like zenidiot, but not quite

Of course, in the spirit of my continual introspection and second- and third-guessing of myself, I have questions.

I'm happy with what I wrote. I think I hit the right note, being candid without being melodramatic or maudlin.

But I'm not sure what my motives are for doing it. Am I genuinely regretful for misrepresenting myself, or is this in itself yet another misrepresentation? Am I just playing head games with myself again?

Sometimes you just have to stop analyzing and go, and deal with the consequences as they happen.