#braaaaaaains

[ceescedasticity]

I realize that the entire way consciousness apparently runs on these biological nightmare machines starts seeming absurd if you think about it in any detail, but I am nonetheless outraged by the concept that any part of emotions/their regulation is run out of the digestive system.

[kingsbridgelibraryteens]

Haven’t had your coffee yet? We know what that feels like!

[pointless-letters]

Alex from Lincoln there, taking to the letters page of a national newspaper to generously allow for the possibility that women are in fact capable of intelligence. They just generally can't get through a day successfully, is all.

[ceescedasticity]

Mood of the day: You have a decent therapist but the clinic's billing department is run by a bunch of snippy, incompetent clowns who never answer their phones.

[ceescedasticity]

Sometimes I wonder if I had an unusually sharp line between fiction and reality as a kid.

I had a great imagination. I came up with all sorts of stories, dragooned people into putting on plays, ran through elaborate, outrageous scenarios with toys.

But I don't remember doing much 'pretending to be something'. And I don't remember, like, having conversations or anything with my stuffed animals.

I read a lot. I am pretty sure I didn't want to go to any of the imaginary worlds I read about.

I started making up characters, and some of those characters had my opinions, and sometimes they had some of my mannerisms, or my interests, or my attitude, or my trauma, or my exasperation level. (Hallmarks of my not-quite-self-inserts: Smart, observant, somewhat detached, usually didn't sign up for this.) But they were (and are) not me. They are a character which is based on me in some ways, not me. And they usually aren't the main character.

I don't know whether I was (am?) unlike most people or just unlike some people.

(I am pretty confident all this is related to how even the most innocuous G-rated reader-insert fic summary sends me hurriedly scrolling past. DO NOT WANT.)

[ceescedasticity]

So I have a long-standing problem where if I find out a complicated dish has an ingredient I know I don't like — e.g. I didn't know what the sauce was made of, turns out it's mustard-based — it doesn't taste as good. I know, I know this is ridiculous. I haven't been able to convince myself otherwise.

More recently I've noticed that every time I read something pointing out how various mobile games manipulate you into playing more, trigger dopamine, get you to do things good for game and bad for you, etc. — I start getting less pleasure from the games. Not like "whenever I play the game I keep thinking of how it's using me", just — it doesn't feel as rewarding to get the play-every-day prizes or whatever. I decide I'm going to play anyway but something just goes "nahhhh".

From my understanding of how this works this is also ridiculous, and also annoying when I'm just trying to find a way to keep busy. I wonder whether these two ridiculous phenomena have the same ridiculous underlying cause?

[ceescedasticity]

I feel like I tolerated the family visit pretty well but now I just want everyone to leave me alone.

[ceescedasticity]

I'm not sure what exactly it is — energy? executive function? — my brain budgets so that I have Enough To Do Usual Routine Things, and then I have enough for one, maybe two more Things, and any more than that and I have overdrafted the Doing Things account and there will be penalties. But it sure seems like there's something.