30 - thank

(For MicroBlogVember)

...you for reading these posts. Egocentric rant ahead.

I think there are broadly two kinds of people:

• People who think they are correct
• People who think they may be incorrect

Furthermore I think we can broadly sort these two kinds of people into subcategories:

• People who think they are correct, and will go to lengths to maintain this self-image
• People who think they are correct, but are open to the sufficiently-proven contrary
• People who think they may be incorrect, and thus seek validation and confirmation
• People who think they may be incorrect, and thus do not begin lest they are proven right

This entirely arbitrary system I made up just now is, naturally, a spectrum. I also think that it's possible to be somewhere on this spectrum while believing yourself to be elsewhere. And, it hopefully goes without saying, subjectivity exists and one cannot necessarily sort any personal opinions into boxes like "correct" or "incorrect" in any sort of objective sense, this is all just vibes.

...if it was not clear, I think I am in the "incorrect" category.

I wish I wasn't. I've told myself in the past that it's better to be someone who's willing to scrutinize my own opinions than one who stomps ahead and sorts it out later (or doesn't), but it always felt like I was coping. It just takes so much more energy to thoroughly examine something than it does to simply shout louder, but people listen to what's louder.

_{(Aside: this statement also ignores that I have ADHD and often do things reflexively without considering my actions, which has caused a lot of problems in my life)}

As I enter the tail end of 2023, I've come to slowly realize something: nobody fucking cares if I'm correct or incorrect. They will see what they want to see and there is nothing I can do about it. Any amount of validation or confirmation or justification I seek (that is not contingent for my material existence) is just self-aggrandizement. Rather that giving me a sense of liberation, I find this notion exhausting because I still think the various thoughts I have may be incorrect... and still think that if I'm incorrect, I must look like a dumbass.

I am a slave to my relationships. I care about what other people think, not just about me, but about things in general. I've internalized the idea that I should defer to others because they probably thought about what they're saying more than I did, because I'm some jagoff who speaks without thinking. If I speak out of turn or wrongly, I expect to be socially ostracized and kicked out of the proverbial prehistoric caveman encampment where - cut off from the tribe - I will most assuredly perish.

This is probably irrational. Considering the amount of bullshit I put up with from people, then they can surely afford to put up with some of my bullshit. Or, I mean, maybe they can't; I learned long ago that social constructs reward consistency of behavior - good or bad - rather than the actual qualities of the behavior. That is, it's always felt as though if I go to lengths to not cause problems and then fuck up once, people lose it, whereas those who cause problems regularly are seemingly accepted for who they are and even rewarded for peeking above baseline. Which, admittedly, is an incredibly myopic way to look at other people who are dealing with their own problems certainly much worse than my own.

I just... I dunno. I want to understand how I'm supposed to do things for my own sake. I want to be able to speak things I believe are true. I want people to like the things that I like for the same reasons that I do. I want to be respected by the people I respect and loved by the people I love. I don't want to look like a dumbass.

These things are - naturally - impossible, but I might be wrong about that.