Still working on that “annotated bibliography” assignment. It’s not due till Friday.

Let’s just say it hasn’t changed my mind about loathing research. I mean, I will learn it and I will do it, but I really dislike it. There’s something about hunting down information that gives me a sadness headache. It makes me feel like I am getting eyestrain from focusing on tiny details for so long.

Like I have said before, my mind is a much better telescope than microscope.

But I have my studies, so the sucky part is mostly lover. I still have to read the studies and digest them so I can create a synthesis of its essence to put into words, but that’s nowhere near as bad as research in my books.

And I’ve written four books!

Which reminds me, I am fairly bummed about not being able to do NaNoWriMo (you know, that thing where I write a book every November? 50,000 words in 30 days? Along with thousands of other lunatics around the world?) this year. It just wouldn’t be a smart move considering my being in school now. Part of my really wants to scream BANZAI and throw myself into it anyhow, come what may, but for now at least, I am going to resist the urge.

It might win yet.

Back to Psych. The first study I am doing my best to read and digest (hey, that rhymes) is the “seminal” research about the Stroop Effect, done by some guy coincidentally named Stroop. What are the odds?

The Stroop Effect describes the way a visual conflict between a color word and the color it’s printed in can make naming said colors far, far more difficult. I have done the Stroop test a number of times myself and it is, indeed, very difficult. Because reading is something we do without conscious thought, it is very hard to ignore the text and say the actual color. A fair bit of on-the-fly correction is needed, and that is very expensive in terms of cognition.

If you want to try that out for yourself (it’s quite interesting and amusing), you can try it out here. Harder than you thought, right?

The problem I am having reading this particular study is that it doesn’t follow the tightly organized rules that more modern studies do. For one thing, there’s no abstract, which is the part of the study that gives a general overview of the study : what was being tested, what was the methodology, results, conclusions, and so on.

So basically, the meat of the thing.

And I really like that, I am very much a general-to-specific kind of thinker, and so it is a great help to understanding the study if I get the big picture first then fit the rest of it into the big picture’s structure.

It’s just how this particular model of brain I have works. I have a much harder time going from the details to the big picture. To me, that’s like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle when you lost the top of the box and therefore have no idea what the damned thing is supposed to look like in the end.

No thank you.

Still, I know I will prevail. I just have to slow myself down long enough to read the thing slowly and thoroughly instead of just vacuuming up information like I usually do.

For someone with a decided left-brain bias, I learn very holistically. I guess that’s what makes me a genius.

Today’s been a normalish day. Went to Ideology and Politics. There was part of the class where we were suppose to look up a bunch of definitions in our textbooks. I don’t have a textbook. So I just kind of froze up inside.

That happens to me a lot. The whole freezing up thing.

The teacher said that if we didn’t have a textbook, we should partner up with someone. And that girl with the sweet smile was all by herself. I am sure she would have been happy to share with me. But I couldn’t do it. Too big a leap for a frozen man.

The weirdest thing about it is that at the time, my mins shifted to a feeling like I had too much stubborn pride to admit I needed a book. Must be my Scottish blood waking up. I felt my jaw set and my chin stick out and everything!

That…. is very unlike me. And the first urge is, of course, to therefore quash it. But I am choosing not to do that because I think it is actually a good sign. A sign that my mind is finally developing some ego defenses to counter the toxicity of my mental environment. Something to fight against the decay and disintegration of my self-worth.

So while the stubborn pride reaction was by no means logical, sensible, or even sane, I think it heralds some very necessary change in me, and that’s a good thing.

My id needs a way, way bigger cage. I have asked other people “Would you rather be right, or happy?” in order to highlight the damage that can be done when people maintain a position simply because if they changed their minds it would mean the other person, whom they are mad at, was “right”.

But now I ask it of myself : Would I rather have the right answer, or be happy? I have said that there’s nothing in my head worth keeping if it gets in the way of my becoming a healthier, happier person. Everything can go.

But what if one of the things holding me back , maybe even the biggest thing, is my fanatical devotion to the truth?

Maybe everyone needs a certain level of BS in their souls in order to protect themselves from the harsher edges of reality. Maybe I have been destroying myself from the inside by ruthlessly rooting out delusion and illusion and illogic. Maybe the only way to be a happy healthy person is to leave yourself lots of room to believe whatever you need to believe in order to remain whole. Maybe the truth is not always the best thing to believe.

The question is, if all that is true, am I capable of changing? How do you stop killing yourself with the truth?

I don’t know. But I know it starts with cutting myself a lot more slack when it comes to the truth.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.