David McElroy

When I launched a YouTube channel a couple of months ago for video versions of my essays, I started inserting short parody ads into the episodes. My essays were serious, but the parodies were ridiculous and fun. At least to me.

Since these shorts have nothing much to do with the video essays — and function a bit like the cartoon shorts that used to run in theaters before movies many decades ago — I decided to set up a separate channel just for these shorts.

The whimsical conceit of the name and concept is that I’ve set up a factory to crank out silliness that is occasionally funny but always ridiculous and unnecessary. That’s why the logo shows film spooling onto a reel as it comes out of an old-fashioned industrial complex.

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The most painful battles I fight are with myself.

I have occasional conflicts with other people, of course, but those are easier to resolve or to ignore. I have to live with myself all the time. I have to live with the person I’ve decided to become today, but I also have to live with various versions of myself from the past. And those differing versions of me can often fight each other for control.

I’ve decided not to be argumentative and angry with other people online. It’s been a conscious decision not to live that way anymore, even though I used to have vicious verbal battles with others, on social media and on message boards before that.

I’ve learned that this sort of vicious argument doesn’t help anyone. I’ve learned that acting in those ways often makes me ignore my own values. And I’ve learned that the toxicity I can spew in one of those battles hurts me more than it hurts the person at whom the words are directed.

But when I feel attacked by someone — as I do tonight — I want to strike back. I have a foolish need to defend my pride. And I can be insecure enough to believe I need to strike back — or else other people won’t think I’m able to prove myself right.

Part of me knows that I need to walk away from such attacks, but another part of me — the person who still thinks and feels the way I used to — is eager to strike back in self-righteous anger.

The toxic inner battle between these parts of me — the person I’ve chosen to be and the person I used to be — leaves me feeling painful inner conflict about who I really am.

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I stood in a park near my house the other day and watched people.

It was a normal scene. The new leaves of spring made the trees look green. The light came through in soft patches. People moved in both directions — talking, laughing, walking with purpose. Nothing about it would have caught anyone’s attention.

I was standing right in the middle of it.

I wasn’t pushed aside. Wasn’t ignored. Certainly wasn’t rejected.

But I didn’t feel part of the scene. I didn’t feel like those people. I somehow wasn’t one of them.

I could hear pieces of conversations as people walked past. I could tell who was relaxed and who was distracted and who was in a hurry. There was nothing unfamiliar about what I was seeing.

It felt like a scene that I was close enough to recognize, but not close enough to step into. I didn’t know how to belong there.

When I was younger, I would have reacted to that feeling differently. I would have felt some combination of frustration and anger. I would have assumed something needed to be fixed — either in me or in the world around me.

I would have tried to close the gap. I don’t feel that way anymore.

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