it's all in the details

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i wrote a post in my head last night while i was lying in bed trying to sleep. but i decided not to get up and write it because it was 3am and i was tired... not that sleepy but tired.

so yeah, it's totally gone and now i'm staring at a blank screen.

the other day a friend of mine and i got talking and i started talking about being cursed with awareness. i hadn't actually used the word curse before a discussion that i had with someone else about this awareness thing when he said it was a curse but it's one of those truths that becomes more true the longer you think about it.

when something happens or someone says something or some political coup occurs i tend to get thinking about 6 moves ahead of what's actually happening.

a rather trivial example of this relates to the price of oil.

something like 7 years ago i was driving to work one day and they did the little stock news and mentioned that oil was twelve bucks a barrel. and then five minutes later on the little news blurb they mentioned that the OPEC ministers were meeting. [seriously if you don't know what OPEC is I can't help you]

so my brain said 'hrm... buy oil with every penny you have' ... except i didn't have any pennies so i didn't, now if i'd had (say) ten grand? i would have bought at 12, sold half at 24 to get my ten grand back ... sold another 25% somewhere around 40 bucks and i'd still have 200 barrels or so at 60 ... and i'd have made a fucking killing.

this has happened to me before in less clear cut examples and with many things that had absolutely nothing to do with money and stocks... but it always happens.

i see connections everywhere and behavioural hints in everything. i've exacerbated this by becoming a professional observer. body language is now my job.

i know that seems, on paper, like an awesome thing right? well first of all all bets are off if i'm into someone... can't read a thing. so instead i can tell months and sometimes years in advance when and how couples are going to split up. i can see who is in love with someone who doens't give a shit about them. i can see how much people i don't like want me to like them. i can see what the messages i'm getting could mean whether the person sending them even knows they're doing it or not. i notice the possible ramifications of pretty much any kind of behaviour long before anyone else can and worse yet? I'm so self aware i could beat myself to death sometimes.

ironically it seems that just because you can see the future doesn't mean that you can affect the outcome or that you're right... it's just that being right is sort of the expected and usual outcome. but hoo boy when you're wrong or you don't have all the info?!?!??

i think a lot of this comes from growing up with no friends but books (and a few adults.) In books when an author wants to reveal a bunch of information or wants to move a story along the main character tends to go into some daze of thought. This will allow pages of exposition and some nice deductive reasoning by said character to boot. Except I don't know too many people who actually think like that.

and i do.

it's the only way i know, i learned to think and to interact with other humans from books and from my parents. which means that i have extremely limited social skills [ask anyone who has ever watched me try to pick up] and very easy buttons to push.

it also means that i am a keen observer of human behaviour and that i am far more likely than most to decide that someone doesn't want me around. And since i never know what to do when i feel that people are fed up with me i usually just disappear.

my physiotherapist told me that i was doomed to disappointment if i kept expecting other people to be as (self) aware as i am... and she's right. but still i don't know how to turn off either the awareness OR the expectation.

and since it's thursday:

this is hubris and i on our campy trip just after we hit the underground stream. see that shirt i'm wearing? i *really* wanted to steal it from it's owner!