In other news, I went out for a walk earlier, as planned, and got everything I wanted to from it - a train ticket for February, the gift from Natasha at Heart and Stroke, and lasagna casserole from Tim Hortons, since it made sense to go there while I was out. I also gave Dan a list of cookies to collect opinions on, which I assume is being done as I write this, but overall, I'm not sure how to describe the place I find myself in right now. When I left for work last night, I felt alright, but then once I got there and started working, something completely different came over me, and for all but the final hour or the night, I could not stop questioning my beliefs about myself and certain things in the world as I saw it. I still hesitate to call it this, but it was exactly like that identity crisis sort of episode I had before, where suddenly I couldn't defend who I was anymore, and couldn't bolster my confidence by the usual means. I remember wondering if I really could deal with having only a small group of friends, or if that was just an act, as a result of the realization I wrote about in my entry yesterday regarding friends in the past. I do honestly believe that I have a way of getting along with people even if they aren't proper friends, but I don't like being attached in a way that they would take my normal lack of talkativeness as meaning that I don't like them anymore. Maybe a majority of people aren't like that, but in that case, as noticed several years ago when I had a good ten people on my MSN contact list, there's a critical mass of sorts, past which being connected to too many people but not talking with them often enough is unbearable. I get the feeling this is derailing into things I've written about before though, just in a different context, so I'll disembark from this train of thought here, and move on to another thought I had last night, that's less personal, but perhaps more important than the above.
A big problem I have with how I define myself lies in my apparent inability to differentiate opinion from fact. For example, I read a blog post online several years ago (I think I found it with StumbleUpon) about how auto-tune was the modern scourge to music. The author purported that anybody who liked it was wrong, without providing any factual explanation for why (it's obvious why they couldn't), which I took completely seriously. It's taken me up until last week when I finally decided "Hey, I like that song that's playing on the radio, and the auto-tuned parts are especially appealing" (the name of the song being "5 O'Clock") to realize that just because the person who wrote that article / post said what they did, that it wasn't necessarily the truth. I'd rather not jump right to this, but a post on co_workers_suck that I read a while back resonates rather nicely with it, and also with certain things that I've wondered about myself. The post itself is here, but the part I'm interested in is where they say "As a side note, I have Asperger syndrome, a form of high functioning autism. I take things literally and to heart...". I only take things to heart because it's faster than having to play games to determine the truth though. If somebody at work told me my till was 800 pounds (~$1,200?) short, I would first ask how long we'd been accepting British currency, then go about the night as best as possible, while trying to think of what I would say to Melissa. Really though, now that I think of it, I take things seriously more because I don't like to be wrong. Another example from work last night was James telling me I was in trouble for being late when I walked in. I could've objected and said there was no way I was late, but what if I actually was?
Other seriousness aside though, I suppose I just still have some thinking to do, but that's good. I like having these problems of self to sort out, because making some sort of advance or breakthrough is truly rewarding. I'm not sure what my thoughts will lead to next, but there's still the whole issue of insecurity to try and pick apart. I think I was onto something yesterday, but I'd rather use my time right now to deal with other tasks. To start: recipe writing, because I can't do much while files are being copied to my laptop. Just need check URLs first~
