proofreading my own paper

Pretenses are bad things only when one excels in making them believable. Awkward, stumbling and bumbling pretenses are considered cute in their desperate earnestness. Of course I would just as soon have nothing to do with them at all. But alas. . . my labyrnthine manner of society has made simplicity impossible in some matters. I'd like to say something like "I'm committed to being more straightforward in these areas" but I know that possession of a candid tongue is not acquired through aspiration but rather a settled conviction.