When you are a natural shapeshifter like myself, it confuses people.
To me, shifting the surface aspects of my personality to match someone I have just met is completely natural. I do my best to pick up their vibe and match it and thus “tune them in”, as the hippies used to say.
Being the person in the middle of it all, I know that I am still the exact same person on the outside. All that has changed is my surface attributes like vocabulary, tone, speed of speech, posture, and so on.
While some or all of those attributes may express who I am in some way, I don’t consider them to be a key part of the real me.
However, to someone who doesn’t know me very well and/or who lacks the sensitivity to perceive that I am the same person on the inside, it might well seem like I have become an entirely different person.
But I haven’t. I am the exact same person who is only shifting on the surface, and I am doing that with no intent to deceive, but rather with the intent to connect.
I have no problem trying to speak someone’s language to them, in the non-literal sense. Different people are on different frequencies, and if I can tune into theirs and make a connection with that person, it makes me very happy.
It’s an amazing feeling to see someone light up because they have found someone who is of their tribe and gets them.
I’m not always successful. To be honest, I am being generous to myself when I say I tend to bat around .333.
But that is more than enough to keep me trying.
Of course, depression gets in the way, like it gets in the way of everything else. I could be far better at connecting if it wasn’t gumming up the works.
Not only does depression get in the way of the subconscious calculations needed for this kind of adaptability, it also dulls my sensitivity and reduces how far and how fast I can shapeshift to match someone.
I would have much, much better social skills if the goddamned depression wasn’t there.
Had therapy today. Not the best session, but that was my fault because I was seriously barely keeping awake.
I have been sleepy during therapy before, but never this bad. I was falling asleep between sentences. I had to yank myself back to consciousness over and over again,l and that is stressful as fuck.
And I know why I was so sleepy.
It’s because the heat was on.
I have talked about this before. That when I go from a cold place to a warm place, I experience what I call “the Melt”, where the warmth makes me super sleepy.
Under the right circumstances, it can be quite nice. Some of the best sleep I have ever had came from this effect. It’s ever so nice to come in from a cold snowy winter day, take off the parka et. al, and curl up on the couch under a nice blanket and snooze.
But it’s a damned nuisance when you actually have stuff to do. Like therapy.
And I am not sure how to fight it. It would look pretty weird if I went around dressed for the summer in the winter just to keep myself cold enough to stay awake.
I suppose I could try deliberately triggering it when I have time to nap, and hope to somehow use it all up.
At the very least, that might be a way to improve my sleep quality.
The trick would be to hold back my rampaging neuroses long enough for it to work when I am doing it on purpose.
My conscious mind is not to be trusted in matters such as these. Left to its own devices, it will pick apart and destroy anything new just for something to do.
So I have to set my id up as the bouncer, keeping the neurosis at bay by sheer thudding mindless force of will.
Go home, you assholes. You’re not getting in. I don’t care what you say.
Time to pick a side
I was warned that eventually, I would have to pick a side in Pillars of Eternity 2.
That doesn’t make it any easier, though.
I have been carefully neutral up to this point. I talk with everybody, I get along with everybody, I work (takes quests from) everybody. I’ve fone my best not to make enemies unless they are clearly very evil.
Like those motherfucking slavers. I kill slavers. Period. Ever since the first time I played Fable and saw the slavers’ human-sized cages with skeletons in them, and something snapped inside of me, I kill all slavers in games, period.
Otherwise, though, I am my usual cautious outsider self. I don’t want to choose sides when there is no clear morally superior side. Sure, I would choose the side of the Goodly Elves And Such over Count Evil McEvil, but when it’s just a matter of a struggle for power between various parties, count me the fuck out.
So I was shocked when I went to turn in a quest to the Queen of Neketaka and she was all, “Thank you for this information. Now we KILL EVERYBODY!”.
Um, no thanks, crazy lady. I will go back to before I talked to your bugshit crazy ass, and try to figure out whether there is a side I actually want to join.
I get the feeling I will not, and then I will be in a pickle because I am pretty sure I have to join one in order to beat the game.
Well, there’s that crazy pirate chick. She might not be morally superior to any of the other forces at play, but at least she’s fun.
Plus she backed me against the slavers. And that counts for something.
God damn do I hate “politics”, in the interpersonal struggle for dominance sense.
Can’t we all just get along?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.