Got an assignment from Job 3 today, and I just can’t do it.

I am supposed to rewrite some stuff about Microsoft Visio (their diagramming tool) and something called Project (1981 New Wave band?) and I just can’t wrap my head around the technical jargon used in the source material.

So I have given up. For now, at least.I have told the boss to reassign it.

I know that my problem is largely emotional. I am freaked out by the unfamiliar territory I am expected to traipse through in order to do this thing, and that anxiety is taking up valuable mental real estate I could be using to crack the problem.

I know this is true because the rational part of my mind knows that it is a simple rephrasing job that should not be causing me this kind of difficulty. Sure, I don’t know what the terms mean, but that is not necessarily a dealbreaker. They are just nouns.

And I can deal with nouns. Even ones I don’t know.

But sadly, at least at this moment, I am too full of anxiety and panic to do a thing with it. I tried very hard. I tried just sitting here as I slog through the mires of my mental illness towards the goal of actual competence.

But I ran out of energy to do that, so here I am, blogging away, hoping that maybe if I express my emotions in text that I will calm down enough to think clearly.

Oddly articulate for a panicking person, aren’t I? Just one of my many perversities. My verbality is so strong that it can function even when my mind is full of the icy chill of panic freezing my mind into absolute stasis when it should be flowing strong and powerful and getting my shit done for once.

I really miss that kitten article. That, I could handle. It was information I could easily assimiliate and turn into fun, engaging, and informative prose.

I am great at that kind of thing!

But this current assignment is just too much. It’s too much like technical writing and I am just plain not that kind of writer. I need to have some idea of WTF I am talking about in order to be able to write about it.

It’s just another part of the curse of needing things to make sense.

Other than this current shitshow, today has been okay. Tomorrow, Vcon starts, and I am looking forward to that.

And after this freakout crisis, I am really going to need some soothing nerdity.

In therapy today, I was telling my shrink that a science fiction convention is one of the only places where I can relax and be somewhat extroverted without anxiety being a significant factor because amongst nerds, I feel safe.

These people get me. These people are like me. I have more in common with these people than I do with most of humanity. This is my tribe. 

And that, I realize now, really shines a spotlight on one of the main factors in my social anxiety : my inability to connect with most people.

The gap between me and the non-intellectual population of the Earth is so wide that I feel like when I try to deal with average people on a social level, I am shouting across a vast divide and desperately trying to make myself understood.

I would close this gap if I could. But I am not sure I can because of my handicap.

No, not the depression or the anxiety or the diabetes.

My social handicap is my inability to be false. I can’t pretend I am something I am not and that means I have no choice but to be myself at all times, and I am one weird dude who operates on a whole different level than most people.

And I wish I had the strength and courage to be one of those “I am going to be me and fuck you if you don’t like it” type people. And maybe I will be that kind of person one day, when I am further along the path of recovery.

But right now, I am still too sensitive for it. Failures to connect with people really hurt me. I desperately long for positive connection to others but my alien and alienated nature prevents it. Regular people can tell how strange I am and no matter how hard I try, I always end up feeling like people want something from me that I cannot deliver and that whatever my responses are, they are wrong somehow.

I have spent my whole life feeling like I am always getting the answers wrong and disappointing and/or alienating everybody but the few people who get me.

People in my kind of situation often resort to intellectual elitism to balance the scales. Sure, I can’t relate to most people, but that’s only because I am ever so much smarter than they are and they just can’t handle what a fucking genius I am.

It’s not my fault that I am so much better than other people!

Yeah, right. I could never be that kind of person. I hate that kind of person. I find them revolting in a very French way. Not only would I consider that to be a severe downgrade as a human being, but what is the endgame there? Total isolation?

I will cop to not being able to relate to most of humanity…. but I refuse to declare that to be their fault. I would love to be in some kind of working environment full of people like me… but that’s because I might actually fit in there, not because I would finally be amongst the elite where I belong. I appreciate my impressive arsenal of intellectual gifts… but I do not feel superior to those who lack them.

In fact, I quite often envy them.

Because they, at least, stood some kind of chance at fitting in and getting along with the rest of humanity.

Sometimes I think I would trade all my gifts to end my isolation.

Instead, I remain in my lonely palance of ice and snow.

And there is no Prince Charming to rescue me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.