That is.
I don't make a second entry for a day when my previous first entry was already past midnight.
Mainly because of the risk that I'll have chronology issues on the blog that I don't know how to fix.
But I'll make an exception.
I am typing this immediately after my "all my days are the same" entry. It's 1 am, that entry was started at like 12:45 am.
But.
One of the things I wanted to talk about is how people give inquiries into my life.
Often times, they will give the fluff questions. "How are you doing?"
I am often conditioned to respond automatically: "good", "alright", and the like.
Sometimes, when I pause to think, but am in a position where I don't or can't talk about it, I'll lie and give the response manually in spite of knowing it's not right. (I do give an honest answer when I think about it, can talk about it, and such.)
Yet there's a third type of situation, more common than both.
I pause to think, but no matter what I try to think about, I don't actually know. I don't have the details. I don't have the ability to think, "What's actually going wrong right now?"
In that.
Say someone asks me how I'm doing.
Say I give a fluff answer.
Say they prod further, or that instead of giving a fluff answer I hesitate.
Then I'm put in the position where I'll probably just answer with the fluff responses of "good", "alright", and the like...even though those aren't the truth. And the issue is dropped right there, because they don't go further. But they need to, because I require prompts.
I don't know what goes on with me. I don't know what's good, what's bad. I don't know how I'm doing. I need others to frame things for me, give me a reference point. "How's your day" isn't a good starting point, nor is "What's happened in your day" for that matter, and those are some of the more creative ones that just don't work.
I don't actually know what does work. I know a bunch of ways which don't.
But often, I find myself in a position where I would love to talk to people and talk my heart out but I don't have any coherent thoughts and I need something a lot more specific than most people can really give. In fact, it's even a little bit of a catch-22:
The only way to really learn something meaningful about me is to get me to open up and talk about the truly important things. The only learn to get me to open up and talk about the truly important things is to engage me in a meaningful way. The only way to engage me in a meaningful way is to have first learnt something meaningful about me to get the right response going in the first place, and thus the cycle continues.
My girlfriend is just about the only one who can actually consistently accomplish the feat I'd say, in spite of numerous others from close friends to coworkers (both long-time and well-positioned) to family attempting the feat. Even I can't really do it to myself; I can't really just ask myself, "how am I doing?" and come up with an honest answer.
That may sound stupid. How could I not know how I am doing when asking myself?
But it's true.
I don't actually know.
The times I do know, it was never because that's the questioned I asked; it was because I stumbled into the answer to an unasked question completely and entirely accidentally.
All my days seem to be the same. So I'm not really feeling great. And yet in spite of that if you asked me how I was feeling I would say exactly that. Because I don't actually know what I'm feeling, if that makes sense, and you'd need to forcefully prod it out of me to get me to actually know it myself.
I don't make a second entry for a day when my previous first entry was already past midnight.
Mainly because of the risk that I'll have chronology issues on the blog that I don't know how to fix.
But I'll make an exception.
I am typing this immediately after my "all my days are the same" entry. It's 1 am, that entry was started at like 12:45 am.
But.
One of the things I wanted to talk about is how people give inquiries into my life.
Often times, they will give the fluff questions. "How are you doing?"
I am often conditioned to respond automatically: "good", "alright", and the like.
Sometimes, when I pause to think, but am in a position where I don't or can't talk about it, I'll lie and give the response manually in spite of knowing it's not right. (I do give an honest answer when I think about it, can talk about it, and such.)
Yet there's a third type of situation, more common than both.
I pause to think, but no matter what I try to think about, I don't actually know. I don't have the details. I don't have the ability to think, "What's actually going wrong right now?"
In that.
Say someone asks me how I'm doing.
Say I give a fluff answer.
Say they prod further, or that instead of giving a fluff answer I hesitate.
Then I'm put in the position where I'll probably just answer with the fluff responses of "good", "alright", and the like...even though those aren't the truth. And the issue is dropped right there, because they don't go further. But they need to, because I require prompts.
I don't know what goes on with me. I don't know what's good, what's bad. I don't know how I'm doing. I need others to frame things for me, give me a reference point. "How's your day" isn't a good starting point, nor is "What's happened in your day" for that matter, and those are some of the more creative ones that just don't work.
I don't actually know what does work. I know a bunch of ways which don't.
But often, I find myself in a position where I would love to talk to people and talk my heart out but I don't have any coherent thoughts and I need something a lot more specific than most people can really give. In fact, it's even a little bit of a catch-22:
The only way to really learn something meaningful about me is to get me to open up and talk about the truly important things. The only learn to get me to open up and talk about the truly important things is to engage me in a meaningful way. The only way to engage me in a meaningful way is to have first learnt something meaningful about me to get the right response going in the first place, and thus the cycle continues.
My girlfriend is just about the only one who can actually consistently accomplish the feat I'd say, in spite of numerous others from close friends to coworkers (both long-time and well-positioned) to family attempting the feat. Even I can't really do it to myself; I can't really just ask myself, "how am I doing?" and come up with an honest answer.
That may sound stupid. How could I not know how I am doing when asking myself?
But it's true.
I don't actually know.
The times I do know, it was never because that's the questioned I asked; it was because I stumbled into the answer to an unasked question completely and entirely accidentally.
All my days seem to be the same. So I'm not really feeling great. And yet in spite of that if you asked me how I was feeling I would say exactly that. Because I don't actually know what I'm feeling, if that makes sense, and you'd need to forcefully prod it out of me to get me to actually know it myself.
RSS Feed
