Let me explain my living situation to you. I live in a giant loft with two other roomates. There is an upstairs deck-like “mezzanine” level that I live on while the other two guys split the bottom floor. None of us have a 4-wall room of our own, but I have more privacy than the other guys since I am up on an elevated level about 8 feet above the other guys. I consider myself to be a private person, I don’t know why but my privacy has always been very important to me. I once destroyed three gnomes for stealing my privacy and keeping it in their secret beach-cave hideout. Who knows what awful things my privacy was subjected to in those 2 months until I recovered it in an epic battle of good vs. evil. Anyway, I digress.

Recently an issue has arisen that has made me question the need for privacy, mine or anyone elses. It turns out the man who designed the building I live in had two glass eyes and the intelligence of an eight-year-old, and therefore the building has some minor and major flaws. One of the major flaws, is that the ceiling is only about 5′11″ above the floor of the mezzanine level where I live. I being the grotesque monkey-man I am, stand at 6′2″ tall. Not only that, there are pipes running below the ceiling so that in some areas I have to duck my head lower than in others. Its all very comedic, unless of course you’re me. The low ceiling has resulted in me avoiding standing as much as possible, and frequent instances of my head banging against the pipes (also very comedic) whenever I forget for a split second that I don’t live in an ordinary space with ordinary dimensions.

Anyway, we have band practice in my “room” since it is the only space big enough to hold all of us and our equipment. Since it is best to recreate the performance day atmosphere, I have started to practice standing up. So you see the problem: during practice, I am forced to hunch over or stand with my legs spread farther apart than usual (again, comedic). This has resulted in certain pains in my legs and upper back from hunching over while playing. Since neither the ceiling is going to get higher, nor am I to get shorter, there is only one solution to this problem: to switch with one of my roomates and move downstairs where there is pretty much zero privacy. I would be sharing the ground floor with Freddie and would constantly be in view from the above mezzanine. So now I have had to ask myself this: what do I value more, my privacy or my posture. Obviously, a year of standing up hunched over won’t be a good thing and could end up leading to more serious problems as I get older. I have always had problems with my weak back and this isn’t helping any.

So I ask you, dear reader(s), what should I do? Give up my privacy which I love and earned thru sweat and tears? Or stick it out up here in the mezzanine until next July?

Anyway, this whole situation has made me question the value of privacy? Why do we feel the need to keep things secret from other people? Should we have things that are kept hidden from people? Obviously there are some things that should be kept private due to security issues (credit card numbers, social security numbers, grocery lists, financial records, etc). But apart from those things, why do we need to hide ourselves from other people? Why do I love not being able to be seen and move about with stealth? Any comments would be appreciated, but obviously ignored. bye