Thoughts

[azekeil]

Well, I'm still definitely depressed. Disrupted sleeping patterns, inability to deal with problems that would not normally upset me, not feeling very sociable (as evident from my lack of livejournal entries).

One of the inability to deal with things episodes I had with kissycat1000 recently got me thinking. I know I'm quite different to 'normal' people, but I was able to quantify another way. I don't bother thinking about things that don't interest me, if I've deemed them unimportant. For example, I had been carrying my bits and pieces around in a white plastic Sainsbury's bag. You know, one of the crinkley ones. I knew in the back of my mind that a white crinkley Sainsbury's bag is not the height of fashion or even vaguely passable, but somehow I refused to care about it. It served its purpose of keeping my sh1t together and stopping it from getting wet, and that was about all I cared about. I was with it enough to stow it mostly out of sight at work as well.

When confronted with its unpleasentness and suggestions of a better bag to use were made I realised the reason I hadn't was.. well.. it Just Didn't Matter. To me, at least. Getting a better bag involved going shopping, which I detest, and spending money, which I detest doing even more, if its on things I don't really want. If I was going to go out to buy a bag I would not be satisfied until I had found the right bag for me, which would involve far more effort, time and thought and probably money than I was prepared to give the matter. So instead I simply refused to care about it.

Odd how my brain works isn't it?

Where is the line that normal people draw; where do they decide they don't like something enough to do something about it? Do they let things annoy them into doing something about it? I could understand if it was something I cared about, like the form of a computer program or sound of a hifi or something. Do other people simply refuse to care about something? I realise a few geeks think similarly; it's apparent in some of their decision making processes.

It's served a good purpose in my life. Indeed, some people find how I ignore some trivia refreshing. Sometimes those same people find it insanely irritating too. However I recognise that I've always gone through life ignoring the details for now, trying to get the big picture right and imagining I can fill in the details later. This has allowed me to prioritise effectively but it's hindered me from fully enjoying all of my life at present - I've simply refused to care about it.

Argh, enough waffle for now.

Comments

[dylan.livejournal.com]

Amazing how one little thing like a Sainbury's carrier bag can set things off isn't it?

I say keep the carrier bag, or maybe upgrade it for a slightly cooler carrier bag

[serena-lesley.livejournal.com]

I gave him a plain black plastic bag to replace it. :/

[dylan.livejournal.com]

Yay! All sorted then

I think you may need to supply lots of men with those, lets hope you've got a few spares

[blaadyblah.livejournal.com]

I've got a really pink one if she runs out...

Er, maybe not...

[dylan.livejournal.com]

are we still talking carrier bags here?

[the-mendicant.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't worry about it - sitting as I do in the 'Asperger Corner' I happend to think you perfectly normal and logical - maybe that's why I like you so much!

[lazrus-armagedn.livejournal.com]

You make complete sense to me ... and I suspect that how you think is the way most people think ... It's just that a) your interests/values differ from those of people who think bags are important and b) you are less easily influenced by the what the neighbours might thinkk, so to speak - Good for you!

[jadine.livejournal.com]

I have a "guide bag" thingy that I carry around. The main zipper broke several months ago. I responded to this by adding a dozen safety pins and continuing to use it.

Eventually I got tired of my partner telling me I should buy a new bag, so I did. But then she moved out before I transferred my stuff to the new one. Accordingly, I'im still using the old bag with safety pins, because it just hasn't been worth the effort to move everything to the new one.

[gerald_duck]

As far as carrying stuff around in a supermarket plastic bag in the office is concerned, for quite a while I was carrying the company's offsite backups around that way!

If I know I have to take something valuable somewhere dodgy, I'll often deliberately bung it in a crappy old carrier bag, or the equally crappy holdall I used for my PE kit at school two decades ago — muggers, pickpockets and steamers tend to go for expensive-looking bags.

On the other hand, I do have one or two nicer bags, for when I want to look presentable.

My general policy is, if I have to buy something, to wait until I can find the thing that's definitely right for me, and that will last a good long while. The disposable, cheap and nasty, alternative has to be really very inconvenient before I'll spend any time or money on an interim solution. I made do with free plastic card wallets from Abbey National for four or five years until I found the wallet I wanted, for example. I did pay a fiver at a petrol station for some usable gloves, though, because I simply had to have a pair, and I've yet to find a quality pair I really like.

Also, when choosing to buy something, I look at what's unusual about my requirements: what do I want that's not normal? I'll find something fairly distinctive and unobvious, which will be cheap because it's unpopular. Being weird does have its advantages. (-8

[androktone.livejournal.com]

i carry my stuff in carrier bags a lot too.. i must look like qa baglady :)

[barty.livejournal.com]

Right now I have, on my desk in front of me, a crinkly white plastic Sainsbury's bag. I don't think you're odd - just practical. They don't give away fancy bags in supermarkets and you can't just screw up a briefcase and put it in your pocket, even when it's empty.

When I look around, I notice that most of my cow-orkers have fancy bags, backpacks and briefcases under their's. But they're crazy, they spend 0.25 GBP a hit to get crap coffee from a machine instead of bringing their own and making it up with water harvested from the office cooler and heated in a microwave.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Aaaw :)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Well.. yes. But sometimes I wonder what life is like on the other side of the fence. And no one commenting to my post has even tried to give me an answer! How infuriating! It was a serious question!

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Heh. Bag people of the world unite!

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Being weird does have its advantages.

Yes, but didn't we have to go through a lot of sh1t to get there? Was it worth it, I wonder? What is life like the other side of the fence?

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

So everyone's like me. What's going on? I'm special! I'm unique! Heeelp meee!

[lazrus-armagedn.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the problem is that you don't associate with the kind of person who would be in a position to answer that question - Like attracts like, so to speak

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Aaah. Maybe that is my self-defense mechanism. Norms just avoid me!

[lazrus-armagedn.livejournal.com]

Works for me :D

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Heh. I do the microwave water trick when I have to, but I usually drink tea..

[gerald_duck]

I was probably weird in a weird way. (-8

Until age eight, I was disruptive in a state school. Then my parents realised that when the school said "disruptive", they actually meant "does no work because he's got so far ahead of the class that he's already finished every exercise in the textbook for the next two terms", which isn't what people normally understand by the word.

So I ended up at prep school, and was weird because my allergies meant I was the only kid with a packed lunch. That taught me a lot about bullying early enough that I could learn how to handle it properly.

Then I was at a public school, and was weird because my parents weren't rich. After the divorce, I was even more weird, because my parent, singular, was actually poor.

By that stage I was also weird because I was an absolutely obscene swot, and breezed into Cambridge.

Then I was weird because I lost interest in conforming to a syllabus. I just spent my time there learning whatever I pleased.

Against that background, the more mundane sorts of weirdness, such as being homosexual and somewhat perverted kinda faded into the background.


How much of that was shit? I don't know. I'm happy with who I am now, and don't see any other way I could have got here. Sure, a lot of my childhood and early adulthood sucked majorly, but I'm led to understand the same goes for most people?

Life the other side of the fence is… shallow, simple, mainstream. I never stop thinking about things. It vexes me that I have no idea at all what it would feel like to spend a day not thinking about everything so much.

I think the grass is greener this side, actually, but I'll never know.

[gerald_duck]

Have you seen the Chavscum website?

Alternatively, one of my favourite aphorisms is "You know how dumb the average guy is? Just think: half of them are even dumber than that." (Unfortunately, I'm also a good enough mathematician to know that it's only self-evidently true if use the median as your average.)

Further, since only 60% or so of the UK's population uses the Internet, the average person doesn't know what Livejournal is, and certainly doesn't read yours. Which may be why you're getting skewed answers to your question.

Provided you reckon at least some of your friends have at least vaguely functional lives, you can draw some comfort from the fact you know so many people who think in largely the same way as you do about this issue. (-8


More generally, of course, the average person lives in Asia.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I always attempted to actively deter them from striking up a friendship with me personally. It only gets complicated ;)

I'm afraid I'm in the 'makes perfectly good sense to me, how else would you deal with such a situation?' camp, but that probably comes as the hugest of non-surprises :)