fishspoken

she liked to tell stories, like the one about the time her grandfather was on a fishing trip with a group of people in the gulf of mexico. a conversation led to the topic of time perception, and a bet was made that whoever could tell when half an hour had passed would be given $50. she said her grandfather kept up the conversation, caught a fish or two, and then in the middle of talking about something completely unrelated, said, “it’s been half an hour.” sure enough, the timekeeper agreed that it was within a minute of when the bet was made, and the money was collected.

today’s revelation, driving home from work, is that I really do care what people think about me - in professional settings. it’s this concern for my reputation that makes me work harder on things when I’m in a team (or even just near others). I don’t care if someone has issues with my opinions, and I’ll happily argue until my opponent concedes. challenge me on something work-related, though, and it’s like a switch is flipped. I care when people criticize my efforts. if I’m really not doing something right, it bothers me.

I think this is why unfairness has bothered me so much at other jobs. if I know something has been done correctly, criticism for any purpose is offensive to me. I can see how in some situations, unfair criticism can educate or prepare, but I think those lessons can be conveyed in better ways. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve had employers tell me on multiple occasions that I was performing far above requirements. that pride, there, that’s what I’m talking about. such an extreme emotion in response to spoken praise!

I’ve considered where this comes from. the stock responses are, of course, that my parents didn’t show affection, that I’ve been hurt significantly, or performed extremely poorly and am compensating. I choose to ignore the possible causes, and look instead at how I can use this tendency for my benefit. if I want to accomplish something, I simply have to engineer a situation where I’ll be respected for achieving it. this would be ideal for activities I wouldn’t otherwise do, or do as well. it should also work for my art - I need to find a way to make external feedback more constant. in school, I had teachers and classmates looking over my shoulder. now, it’s just me, so I just have to find those figures and recruit them for my own ends.

we recognize each other on many levels - broad categories: physical appearance, behavior; speech patterns and mannerisms, and deeper characteristics like humor, trust and kindness. all of these change with time and growth, but specific markers carry over and allow us to pick the girl we knew in fourth grade out of a crowd of people.

are we defined, then, by the transient and surface qualities? or the deeper, persisting ones? if I’m consistently violent in uncomfortable situations, is that part of who I am as a human? what if one of my time-tested tendencies is to play at compassion? is the compassion a part of my identity, or the act (or both?) are we the sum of every possible characteristic, or are we Truly a small set of constants, overlaid with environmental response?

it’s rare that someone comes out and calls me an ass, but I think we all know that’s not an unexpected (or new) description. does my regular expression of apathy contribute to my identity? better yet: if I can change it, is it really me? I doubt anyone would argue that part of being a living human is breathing, and including that constant action in my personal definition is certainly accurate. what about anger, though? I’m not constantly angry, but anger is something that identifies me - or, perhaps it’s my specific approach toward anger.

take away the traits that change, though. would I recognize myself with only those qualities that I’ve shown regularly for the past five years? would I like that person? is that important?

steps taken: initial perception of emotion, translation, specification, then finally accumulation and exercise of motivation to communicate. so many ‘tions just to be labeled as emo drama on another online journal. removing contextual tells, I wonder if there would be any difference between the blog of a high school sophomore and a multiple degree holding ivy league graduate, if both were completely honest about their feelings.

peter pan never grew up. in the end, his tragedy was only externally perceived; he lived in blissful, selfish childhood ignorance, presumably forever. those who knew him were the ones hurt by his unconscious absence. is happiness Truly the highest goal? in my country, it places third to life and liberty (at least on paper), but it seems few people are concerned with the quality of those aspects of existence. childhood remains a focus, and everyone with a happy childhood memory will always hold it as a standard.

nothing holds my heart so tenderly as a sky full of stars, the ocean or the sound of a forest when I pretend to belong. some people seek happiness, and depending on whether I’m being glib, honest or somewhere in between, I like to say that Truth matters the most, or Beauty, or simply what’s Right. probably, though, it’s something closer to the feeling I get when listening to masterfully composed, swirling ambient music in the dark, the stars shining as counterpointed  melodies grip my metaphorical head and stare into my eyes. what is that if not Truth? at the very least, it can’t be disproved.

it’s nearly one am here, and Cat and I are both awake after a fairly heated argument. I can trace the conversation back to what got me frustrated and then angry, and part of me still thinks that I’m perfectly justified, and my points are perfectly rational. there’s another part of me, however, that’s not so certain . . . I feel like I’m continuing the argument within myself, essentially calling myself irrational for responding to the situation the way I did, and at the same time I’m very forcefully denying that I’m blowing things out of proportion or making out of context comparisons. I’m extremely confused about what’s going on in my head. this is at least the third time we’ve had an argument like this while in alaska, and I can’t remember anything this heated happening in mn . . . or ma for that matter, but I may just have forgotten. I know that I can get angry over what others see as little things, and the part of me that’s still angry claims that I’m being perfectly reasonable, and the reason Cat thinks I’m over-reacting is because she just doesn’t understand how the situation affects me personally, and if she did understand, she’d realize why I’m angry.

one of the best things about being here has been the constant presence of external stimuli - I can always look outside and see something that can take my mind away from introspection. this keeps me from over-analyzing like I’m prone to do, and I think my mind has benefited greatly. I can’t help but wonder, though, in moments like this, whether I’m doing myself any favors by not examining my actions and motivations as much. I tend to second-guess myself all over the place, and every anomaly is approached as an extreme - assuming, for example, that every sore throat is strep, and every suspicious skin blemish is cancer. for the most part, I recognize this as unhealthy. can I take the same view when it comes to my mind? should I back off and let myself think as I do without self-examination? or should I, in light of my own history and my family before me, look deeper, and seek out the possible foundations of a very real mental breakdown?