The 'On Paper' and 'The Real'

[fazzle]

On paper (or perhaps your favorite online dating website) Fazzle sounds really good.
Ridiculous educational achievement? Sure sure.
High earnings potential even in a down economy? Absolutely.
Sporty and athletic? Enough to play most sports, but not enough to spend 8 hour at the gym and spend a half hour looking in the mirror.
Conversational? Well Fazzle knows a lot about a lot and a little about a little and nothing about some rather small category of things. (This happens when you're very close to autistic).
Witty/good sense of humor? Certainly. And willing to laugh at his own expense may Fazzle add!

And now we get the reality of it, because all the things that look good on paper are horrors in real life.
Educational achievement... has robbed Fazzle of an interesting life. Oh sure Fazzle can tell you about Federal Rules of Evidence and the 1934 Securities Act, but he does not do interesting things anymore. Being forced to read the damn IRS code (and yes, Fazzle was required to read the Abridged Tax Code for a class) robs Fazzle of the interesting stories that make life fun. If you talk to Fazzle once every 3-6 months, well, you got the whole of his life.
High earnings potential... has resulted in economic conservatism as Fazzle watches people lose their money. Fazzle misses the days when he really did think nothing of the idea of bouncing around Asia for a year studying food or security or who cares... and now he is simply a shell of a drone worker. Because the taste of the good life is poison. When firms dangle cash in front of you, treat you to awesome dinners and pay for ridiculous hotels, you shift your priorities. Fazzle does not claim this is good, its just how it is.
Sporty and athletic... works against an actual relationship interest. Fazzle goes to the gym to look good for the opposite sex and because his classmates are doing it. It also means that Fazzle has that much less time for whatever individual actually wants to be in a relationship with Fazzle. Add together the tax code, sleep, eating from time to time, and now the gym... and actually time becomes a serious problem. Not so good for the women of the world who believe (perhaps correctly) that having regular contact or communication with a person is a good thing.
Conversational... results in a veneer of interesting things and no depth. Fazzle can hobknob about wine for about an hour, mostly because he's read enough about it to do so. But does Fazzle WANT to go to a wine-tasting with your friends and hobknob about it for 4 hours? Absolutely not. Fazzle isn't interested in the things he can talk about, he learned about them specifically because someone else was interested in them. But this creates a very awkward time for a relationship. "I got you surprise tickets to that new Broadway musical!" Oh, Fazzle is so excited..." In reality, Fazzle likes Broadway just enough to go, but sure as hell not enough to be excited enough about the tickets to please the well-meaning woman in the hypo. Normal people, better people, have specific interests which they convey by knowing things about them and focusing on them. This selects them out of many possible social circles (bad for business, especially in Fazzle's business), but also means the social circles they do spend time often mesh with their interests. Fazzle has the opposite.
Humor... is only good when it isn't horribly dark and caustic. Fazzle is anything but politically correct. A character flaw perhaps, Fazzle prefers to think of it as an adaptive technique of a life lived often being the smartest guy in the room. What is completely clear is that the dark dark humor that Fazzle has is enjoyed by a select segment of society, not necessarily the segment that likes the rest of Fazzle's theoretically good attributes. See, at the end of the day, it seems to Fazzle that most people WANT life to be good and happy and full of bunnies or whatever. Fazzle long ago stopped thinking that was possible or interesting and hence finds it far better to look at misery and misfortune as humorous (both to others and to Fazzle). This goes over badly with nice people.

Fazzle writes this today because he is starting to get the distinct impression that the girl he has been off-and-on dating really likes most of the first set of things, but really hates the second set... even though they are all cut from the same fundamental factors. Perhaps a love of what 'ought' to be instead of what 'is'. Normally, this would trouble Fazzle. He would posit to her that she loves an image of him she has created, and not the truly broken, flawed, often grotesque reality. But Fazzle has also realized that while his training in argument has left him well equipped to deal with many a foe, it has left him at a supreme disadvantage against anyone who isn't playing the argument game. So instead, he does what anyone really can do when placed in a true double-bind between willfull blindness and blinding light: he persists. And in persisting, perhaps Fazzle adds a trait that is in both sets more than any other; being true to whatever being one is, often times at great cost.