Mundane prophecies

There's a guy I bump into periodically, from my program, and we are bonified acquaintances, though I guess that is how I am with most of my classmates.

It is strictly business whenever we talk: school, extracurriculars, and summer plans (not the recreational aspects of it). And, I'll be honest, I'm a little behind others as far as my extra-curriculars go, which was also a huge factor in my prolonged period of anxiety culminating around a month ago. He has a tendency of prodding on those subjects, I imagine he does this in order to keep a current idea of the "pulse" of the general achievements of his colleagues. Well, let's just say, my responses are never quite impressive enough and I always get a huge judgmental vibe from him, pretty much every time. It's a huge turn-off and I hate it when the conversations end up like that, which unfortunately seems to be an inevitability every time.

It happened today again and, yes, the conversation progressed through its predictable course. And, as I reflect on it, I wonder, does he share in the disdain that I have for our conversations? The reason I can't stand our conversations is because, probably, we just don't have the same priorities and so when we talk, we just completely fail to relate to one another, making it a wholly futile exercise.

A similar thought came up yesterday. I was walking around the neighbourhood and happened to cross two yuppie-phased men and one was talking about some aspect of his work and he seemed to talk about it with such conviction. It dawned on me that that sort of attitude is so far removed from my experience. I don't just don't rank work-related issues (ok, not that I'm working right now) very high at all in terms of things I actually give thought to.

And so, it is actually curious to think about how my dear acquaintance views the conversations we have. He probably thinks I'm some ambitionless dumbass who doesn't apply himself nearly enough if he actually wants to get anywhere in this short life of ours, someone who would be much better off in some dark cave on Trill (DS9 7x03, duh). We certainly don't talk normally and so I imagine that he doesn't take our conversations to be the highlights of his days either.

Hopefully, though, I don't come off as an asshole.