More Karma with 42% More Misanthropy

For the record, while I’m a bit grumpy and misanthropic today, this post probably sounds much more gloomy than I actually feel. Just a heads up that in reality I’m doing pretty damn good, and am not in some kind of deep funk or anything.
I realized today that I hate people. This includes most of my friends who I really like. I hate them too. They’re all annoying. Let me ‘splain.
Most of our friends fall into at least one if not several of the following categories:

• Have or are having children
• Are impossible to get a hold of
• Have their lives dictated by other people
• Are so hard to coordinate any time with that launching a space shuttle or getting a bill through congress look easy by comparison
• Live or are going to live very far away (very far ranging from 30 minutes to another country)
• A litany of other self absorbed selfish gripes

Take my cousin for example (as a complete side note, I absolutely can not write “cousin” without writing “cousing” and then correcting it).
Now I only use him as an example because a)he illustrates many of my points, b) he is the most amusing example, and c) I don’t think he ever reads this. So this not to pick on him, just to illustrate my point.
He has always been like a brother to me and is one of my favorite people in the world to hang out with. I thought it would be so great when we moved to Austin because then I’d get to see him all the time! The first barrier to this is getting a hold of him. It is such a farce that we’ve come to call it the “Casey lottery”. If we do actually reach him we jump and yell and celebrate winning the Casey Lottery. As you could probably guess, Casey does not have a cell phone, nor does he want one, and in fact is vehemently against owning one, bu that’s another story.
The strangest part of the fact that he is never home is that when we do see him he usually can’t ever stay away from home for very long because he has to get back to take care of his pets. This makes any kind of trip out of town next to impossible. There is a whole sub-irony to that fact due to how often he is watching other friend’s pets for them while their gone (which seems very often), so you would think he’d have a plethora of people willing to do the same. He can’t ever leave home for too long, and yet he’s never home. It’s a mystery/enigma burrito. Of course we often hear about other trips he took to camping or go out of town with other friends, so that pretty much leaves the option that he hates us.
If you do manage to get a hold of him, finding a time to actually do anything with him is a whole other hurdle. Even if we manage to get together with him for some particular purpose (like filming part of our movie yesterday), as soon as business is done he usually has to go. He’s tired. He has to wash clothes. He has to go kick his dog. Again, leading to the inevitable conclusion that he hates us.
Another big part of his presence being as common as ice skating on the river Styx is the fact that he is very popular and unfortunately has many friends who are extremely demanding, guilt trippy and far more aggressive and effective than we are at grabbing his time. He’s obviously hanging out somewhere all the time, but it’s not with us, nor are we ever invited. There’s this whole separate group of friends who we know and like, yet can’t crack into ourselves. It’s the secret Casey society, and we don’t know the handshake.
There was a time when I thought we would make the greatest roommates ever. At one point I proposed this to him since he lived in a three bedroom house all by himself, and he very politely shot me down saying he was enjoying living by himself for the time in his life. That was fair enough actually, but it was kind of the crushing blow that made realize the cold hard truth: My high regard and brotherly affection for my cousin was not a two way street.
This is an important fact. Important because it is a recurring theme in my life. Whenever there is someone I really want to be good friends with, it is rarely ever reciprocated. I’ve written before about being so excited to find old friends and wanting to strike up th old friendship only to be met but polite indifference and only when I initiate contact.
I have decided this must be Karma. Karma because I, in fact, am a totally crap friend. I suck at keeping in touch with people, and have let more great friendships fall by the wayside than some people ever have. So I guess it’s only right that the people who I really want to hang out with and get to know better, or foster real lasting friendships with don’t always feel the same way. It was quite a realization to me. If you believe in anything like karma then it really does fit.
Thus I have become a huge misanthrope and it only seems to get worse as I get older. People are annoying. Even my friends. They probably say the same about me.