Am I too damn analytical for my own good? :(

Post Reply New Topic

Greeting, fellow Wrong Planet-eers! It's been AGES AND AGES since I've posted here seriously (and I bet lots of you who know me are grateful for that ), but something happened very recently which I think needs to be discussed. And shockingly, it has nothing to do with my father or my family in general! (insert gasps here, lol)

It has to do with myself...and how sometimes, I think I'm too god-damned smart for my own good.

You see, two nights ago, I'd watched the Oscars on ABC, and when they were over, I was talking with my best friend online about past Oscar history. At one point in the conversation, I said to him that all of this year's winners in the acting categories (Supporting and Leading alike) were *first time nominees*! In the heat of the moment, I proudly boasted "That ain't NEVER been done before!"

But the following morning, while I was on the toilet, I replayed that conversation in my head...and I suddenly though..."No, that can't be right...what about the first ten years of the Oscars? For that period of time, EVERYBODY was first time nominees, and everyone was winning for the first time!" (Spencer Tracy being the only exception; he won back to back awards)

Then I was hit with ambivalence towards myself: on the one hand, I was happy that I took the time to think about something that most NT people wouldn't stop to think about, which just proved how smart I am. But on the other hand, I was equally as disgusted for the same reason; that I would pick apart my own playful boast at the time, and scold myself for being so momentarily ignorant.

Which brings me to the point of this little rant; if I can't even say something playfully or boastfully without nerding the f**k out of myself, picking apart something I said because I didn't have any proof to back up my statement, then I truly AM too smart for my own good. I never thought I'd say this, but I HATE being this smart! If I was born a normal person (an NT), I could just say whatever I wanted, and not constantly worry about whether or not it has any validity to it.

In short, I guess what I'm trying to say is...I'd rather be stupid and happy, then intelligent and always analyzing the hell out of myself.

What do you guys and girls think? Please feel free to comment.

Usagi1992

that's why 'they' say ignorance is bliss methinks..
this example reminds me of me, i am liable to analyse to this extent..
if you were too smart, you would have thought about the first 10 years whilst boasting & stopped
seriously tho.. this doesn't sound too bad.. a lot of very intelligent people say occasional silly things..

Well, I sympathize with your angst, because I do the same thing to myself pretty much constantly - lately it's become so bad that I can spend a half hour composing a WP post, hit submit, then 30 seconds later go back and delete the whole thing, second guessing myself over whether I said what I meant to say properly, or whether I may offend someone's sensibilities and step on their feelings.

I sometimes have dreams in which I suddenly realize something I said while I was awake was incorrect and wake up feeling humiliated. I thought I'd outgrown that years ago, when I worked in a job that had me prattling out loud to an audience for hours a day and I often said things and told jokes that fell flat, but learned to just move on to the next element and not look back.

Still in all, if you handed me the Stupid-Gun, I couldn't point it at my head and pull the trigger (though some days a real one might be a different story). I'd rather die smart and miserable than stupid-and-anything. And most likely, I will.

I do this quite a lot aswell. Sometimes I have to talk to the person again just to correct what I said, most of the time they don't even remember it but it makes me feel better.

...and I think I just realised why some people say I come off as arrogant, or at least one of the reasons.

I do this all the time, except I have a tendency to edit my posts like 3 or 4 times. I'm glad it don't tell how many times it's been edited, until after someone else posts after you, or people would think I'm a little nuts.

Isn't it maddening how you can Spellcheck a post to death, then proofread it twice, and STILL find mistakes in it after you've posted it? I swear, I think there's a bug in the software that injects mistakes as it submits the post.

I had to learn to let go of small mistakes. That was no small battle! And then I had to learn that most people don't care - for most people, conversation has nothing to do with information. They don't care if I or somebody else said something incorrect, and they certainly don't want to know what is correct. That's boring to them! It's hard to learn to have 'empty conversations' and I still come out with information occasionally.

That's why I always have dictionary.com open in another tab, just to be sure.

Not that it makes me incapable of making mistakes (I always spell it as "misstakes" for example).

That, I didn't know. Not exchanging information? hehe. You're probably right. It makes more sense, now, although I always thought gossiping was a form of information exchange...
That, I do know. Yet, I still find myself wanting to correct myself and others, although I've learned to bite my tongue a bit. *shrug*

Oh wow! What you said just made me remember something that drove me absolutely BONKERS, because I was too polite to say anything!

You see, for a time, I used to volunteer at a nursing home to call the bingo numbers and occasionally attend holiday themed parties. Well, when I went to the Halloween party (which was costumed themed) I noticed that one of the adult staff members was dressed up as Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. But what drove me frigging MAD was that everyone, including the lady herself, thought that the costume was that of Cruella De Vil!

I just felt like screaming after the tenth time this happened, "It's NOT CRUELLA! IT'S MALEFICENT! THERE'S A BIG DIFFERENCE!" Argh! I couldn't BELIEVE that people could be so ignorant and STUPID!! But I didn't wanna spoil the mood of the party by correcting these nice people, so I kept it bottled up inside.

Looking back on that, I envy those people, and wish that I could be that stupid and ignorant. At least they were happy and enjoying themselves.

Usagi1992

Congrats on your strength - it is hard to let people be wrong. I don't talk as much as I used to - which also offends them. Whaddya gonna do.

AH! I'm not the only one! Except my extra tab is most often Thesaurus.com. Spelling has always come fairly easily to me, but I worry constantly that my vocabulary is not as extensive as it ought to be. :S

Oh Mac OS X, how I adore thee. You just need me to press apple+space (which is the equivalent to alt+space on a normal keyboard) and you open a small Spotlight frame for me, so I can type in whatever I desire, and then press enter to get a complete explanation from the English Dictionary, the all-inclusive list of synonyms from Thesaurus and the full Wikipedia page.

This is probably my favorite feature from this OS, because just like you, I'm also always open to broaden my vocabulary. I use it once every five minutes on average, when browsing the web, and I used it six times while typing this reply. (Three times before I started editing.)

Well, it's like what Agent K said in "Men in Black"; a PERSON is smart...PEOPLE as a whole are basically stupid, panicky and will believe anything they're told.

That's why I barely socialize...not just from fear of correcting people when they're obviously wrong, but that if I let things go enough, *I* might turn into one of them, and not care about being right anymore.

Usagi1992

You're a very strong person, and I admire you.

I also analyze things, all the time. When I catch myself analyzing whether it would be better for me to start the day, with tea or coffee, I know I'm in trouble.

taking the devil's perspective:

why do you care so much that you're right? being right in most social situations has no intrinsic value. So what if you're wrong? be wrong! Be comfortable in being wrong! It happens. learn, play, correct yourself later.

Worrying about this has created a toxic feedback-loop that makes you think more and more about less and less.

-Luke