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Devil's Advocatacy doesn't pay enough
Apr. 21st, 2010 06:55 pmBeing told you're smart is annoying. Yes, it feels good to know that others acknowledge the fact that you can retain what you've learned well and apply it to a given situation, but that doesn't mean you always need to hear it. You know you're smart. Shut up. Too often it feels like the person telling you is trying to guilt you into something. You aren't doing enough with your life, you could be in a better job, you aren't applying yourself to higher things. Hey, guess what? Not everyone wants more. Or at least not the more that you want. I'm sorry if you feel you've stalled out in life, but just because I may have the intelligence to have gone further doesn't mean I'm in a situation that would allow me to do so; or even if I was, I may be perfectly happy where I am.
I don't think that had anything to do with what I'm trying to say.
Rationalization. I consider myself fairly intelligent, and given enough foreknowledge and fact about a certain subject I feel I can often rationalize almost anything. I can play out scenerios hundreds of times with tiny changes that alter the entire outcome. I'll reverse engineer a decision or plotpoint and come up with why they went with that. But this is also annoying as hell.
This ability has gotten me into...well not direct, but has given me trouble in my life, in both personal and in my writing. The ever present "what if" hangs over my head constantly, and has me second-guessing myself as to whether or not I made the right decision. I know I've lost out on several occasions in my life that would have otherwise been much different had I just made up my mind, or not worried about the "what if" and instead focused on the "what now" actually presented. When I try to write, if I don't have a set idea of what I want, I'll have the scene playing like a movie in my head again, and again, and again, with those hundreds of tiny changes I mentioned and I don't get anything done because I don't know what is the best version to go with.
But when something is already done and over with, I can back track and see what might have been. This is the whole "twenty-twenty hindsight", knowing that the other choice would have been better, but more than that really. Knowing how a person reacts, or will react, can alter how you work with the choice already made. I'll look back and see that, had I just done this a little different, I would be slightly better off.
This whole thing makes planning ahead difficult, because I want to have it all set before me. If I do this, I want this to happen; should I say this, I want this person to react just so. If I go two spaces forward, I want the oppose to move backwards diagonially left. And to a certain degree I can predict what will come, and rolling with the variables is part of the whole game, but it skews the decided upon idea sideways, and then I'm left trying to get this whole thing either back on track or at least as close to where I want as I can.
I don't think that had anything to do with what I'm trying to say.
Rationalization. I consider myself fairly intelligent, and given enough foreknowledge and fact about a certain subject I feel I can often rationalize almost anything. I can play out scenerios hundreds of times with tiny changes that alter the entire outcome. I'll reverse engineer a decision or plotpoint and come up with why they went with that. But this is also annoying as hell.
This ability has gotten me into...well not direct, but has given me trouble in my life, in both personal and in my writing. The ever present "what if" hangs over my head constantly, and has me second-guessing myself as to whether or not I made the right decision. I know I've lost out on several occasions in my life that would have otherwise been much different had I just made up my mind, or not worried about the "what if" and instead focused on the "what now" actually presented. When I try to write, if I don't have a set idea of what I want, I'll have the scene playing like a movie in my head again, and again, and again, with those hundreds of tiny changes I mentioned and I don't get anything done because I don't know what is the best version to go with.
But when something is already done and over with, I can back track and see what might have been. This is the whole "twenty-twenty hindsight", knowing that the other choice would have been better, but more than that really. Knowing how a person reacts, or will react, can alter how you work with the choice already made. I'll look back and see that, had I just done this a little different, I would be slightly better off.
This whole thing makes planning ahead difficult, because I want to have it all set before me. If I do this, I want this to happen; should I say this, I want this person to react just so. If I go two spaces forward, I want the oppose to move backwards diagonially left. And to a certain degree I can predict what will come, and rolling with the variables is part of the whole game, but it skews the decided upon idea sideways, and then I'm left trying to get this whole thing either back on track or at least as close to where I want as I can.