There is a thin line between modesty and self-effacement. I live on that line. I honestly don’t know if it’s because I just have a generally low self-esteem, or because that’s just become a part of my personality because I have tried to create the illusion of friendliness or am actually friendly. In any case, I am a generally modest person. Whenever I say something modest, I think to myself how humble I may sound saying it, when in actuality, I may just sound pathetic.

There are only so many things you can say you suck at until a woman believes that you were not meant to be on this earth. Through my gradual lifestyle overhaul over the past couple of years, I have learned to refine my modesty into borderline self-contentment. Women don’t like men they can feel sorry for. They like friends they can feel sorry for. They like men they can respect. Though modesty often wins over arrogance, nobody likes being in a relationship with a community service project, unless that is their community service project.

There’s an art to drawing attention to yourself without drawing attention to yourself. Of course, I do not know this art at all. I can either make a complete ass of myself, or I can make myself out to be the quietest, weakest person in the room. However, I have learned through self-imposed personality reassignment that I can infuse my instinctual modesty with some dignity. I still display my signature horrible self-conscious shrugs and face scratching, but often don’t accompany that with detailed stories about the genesis of my back hair or tales of my immeasurable sadness.

Having a wonderful girlfriend certainly helps with my modesty issues, but I wasn’t able to get her to like me if I wasn’t already on this path to pride. I now know that the only reason that I lost all of that weight and changed my life around was so that I could find her. That is cheesy. I don’t care.