For the last few years I’ve felt more socially competent than I did in the 4-5 years before that.  But I have this unshakable – though irrational and probably just wrong – feeling that none of this is real progress or “growing up,” but just a set of simple learned habits.

As I’ve said to many of you before, I’m used to thinking that there is something obviously “wrong” or “off” about me in all interpersonal situations that leads people to compare me to robots, pets, children, etc.  People used to do this constantly, and now they do it rarely.  And I can’t help but feeling that it’s because I’ve just “memorized the cheat codes” that make people treat me like an adult human.  No real progress, just some clever tricks that amount to a pretty good human impression.

I know that isn’t fair to any of the people I talk to these days, but it’s hard to shake the feeling.  That what separates me from the Rob of 5-6 years ago is only these extra brittle rules and that eventually the human impression will break down when closely examined.  Yes, I’m a new, classy, sophisticated model of robot – with many of the old annoying bugs worked out, more realistic conversation trees, more convincing emotional expression – but still a robot after all.  You’ll realize eventually, and shut me off when I outstay my welcome.  (That’s not fair to you, I know, I know, I know.)

(Do you criticize people for being “arrogant”?  You would have thought I was “arrogant,” too, years ago.  I’m “humbler,” now, supposedly.  Except I’m not; I used was even more self-critical than I am now, surely less arrogant in any real sense; I’ve just learned the right codes to enter that apparently signify “humble” more and “arrogant” less; for some reason I hate thinking of this as any kind of progress … )

The fact that I have friends must be part of some sort of psychological experiment or conspiracy.  It couldn’t be that hard to hide my fundamental badness, right?

I wonder what the purpose of this elaborate plot is.  Maybe someday there will be a deeply involving documentary about the actors involved, the techniques they used to steel themselves for the daily grind of putting up with me and pretending to like it, the sheer talent necessary to act out numerous facets of human relationships with me without once breaking character

(To be clear: I’m not freaking out at the moment, I’m just having some tolerably mild mental background chatter of this kind and then laughing at it)

Today in bad thoughts with funny implications:

The bad thought: “my ‘true self’ is bad and unlikeable, so anyone who likes me must be under some sort of misconception about who I really am”

The implication: “but there are people who like me and have lots of experience with me, so I must be some sort of unintentional master of deception, an accidental evil genius, who keeps unwittingly hiding my true self from people no matter how well they seem to get to know me”

(Alternative possibility: “these people are all masterfully deceiving me into thinking they like me, even though they don’t – but they still actively seek out my company or conversation for deeply mysterious reasons”)

For a lot of last winter I was really sleep-deprived and stressed out about work, and for some reason the idea I become fixed on, as a fantasy of what I’d do when I was free and well-rested, was: read the four classics of Chinese literature

I guess this was partially because they sounded cool, but also because they were a thing that sounded cool and seemed totally removed from anything I know about.  An expansive world distant from me in time, space and culture, which rarely comes up in my sphere of experience even when you’d expect it would.   Escapism, though maybe not in the usual sense of the word.  (Hopefully not exoticism.)

The only result of this was that I tried reading Dream of the Red Chamber / Story of the Stone, was having a hard time getting into it (partially because I was still tired and stressed, and it’s a slow-paced book with a lot of characters), and then someone put it on hold on the library and I had to return it after 150 pages.

Considering that that one sounds like the most accessible of the four, I’m not sure the prospects look good for me reading all four of them at any point, much less enjoying the experience.  Nonetheless, they still occupy this special status in my mind, probably out of proportion to how much I’d really enjoy them.  (Probably because they were a thing I thought about a lot during a stressful time?  Or maybe it really is just Orientalism.)

This is doubtlessly an overly extreme estimate (an upper bound?) but sometimes it is comforting to imagine that I simply did not develop socially for the 5 years I was on Risperdal

So when I got to college I was “13,” in social terms.  When I graduated, I was “17.”  Now I’m “21.”

I don’t actually think this way except maybe once every few months when the idea occurs to me, but it’s always very comforting.  I am doing a lot of things unusually late and there’s a convenient frame I can use that makes sense of that, even if the frame is really bullshit or at least overly extreme

(Of course it could easily become an excuse for low standards for myself if I used it with any kind of regularity)

Blargh, I really do feel awful today, still.

But at least I picked up the prescription, and that and (ideally) laundry are all I need to do today.  I can pack tomorrow because that doesn’t take too long and my flight’s in the evening.

If I could write that last post I can probably leave the house and pick up my prescription, so I think I’m going to do that now.

It’s an irreducible part of me that I feel guilty for not being as smart as some other people.  For instance, I feel guilty because I’m not as smart as Scott Aaronson.  This doesn’t make any sense, because I’m not in control of how smart I am, but there it is.

When I say this, people sometimes ask “why do you feel like you need to be that smart?”  I don’t know, and this question always makes me feel additionally guilty, because it seems like some sort of vanity – wanting to be laudable and impressive.  I don’t think that's really it, though.  It’s more like envy: some people seem to live their lives in a sort of self-consistent state where they feel capable of thinking about the kinds of things they are interested in.  Where I don’t: I am aware that I have a very hard time understanding many of the things that interest me, and many of the things that are easy for me to understand don’t seem interesting to me, perhaps for that very reason.  (After all, if I can understand it, it must truly be trivial, right?)

Mantras for dealing with HORRORVOID:

“Everything flows.”  Meaning: as much as I may feel that everything has been somehow (?) forever ruined or proven invalid or unsalvageable or etc., memory shows that I have felt this way many times before and yet gone on to have many enjoyable and optimism-inducing experiences later on.  In general, there have be no or few “losses of capacity” in my mental life; no unhappy day leaves me lacking the potential to have happy days in the future, although much of the content of the unhappiness is that future happiness is somehow implausible.  Or, even if possible, that’s it’s somehow “false” or “delusory.”  But when the happiness happens, it will feel true and the unhappiness will feel “false” or “delusory.”  The HORRORVOID makes bad predictions.

“This isn’t usable.”  Said of thoughts and ideas, the way a writer might say that something they’d written was so bad it could not possibly be salvaged for the final draft, even with major editing.  Some sorts of feelings about my surroundings have so little in common with what I “actually believe” that there is no possibility of bridging the gap; the worldview they belong to is too far from my “actual” worldview to make possible any communication between the two, much as it is hard to “pick and choose” insights from political writers sufficiently far from your own views.  Physically, these thoughts are a part of my life, but I can refuse to make them a part of my intellectual life; they will be removed from the “final cut” of the progression of my sense of the world around me, as irrelevant detours and cul-de-sacs.

Today: 5-6 hours sleep, somewhat HORRORVOID

Have to leave the house to do something and we’ll see if that does anything about it