Metafeeling

Thinking about what you're thinking can be exhausting. One of the challenges of a long recovery like I'm having is my desire to be gauging progress. Am I feeling better today? Oooh, I feel dizzy, tired, energetic, sharp, unfocused, just okay. What does that mean? And just because I ask that question, does it really mean anything?

More generally, at this point when you're asked to give your greatest strengths and weaknesses, I think the safest possible answer is that human brain's ability to detect patterns is perhaps its greatest strength while its desire to detect patterns is its greatest weakness. Finding real patterns is no more useful than finding patterns that aren't really there is deleterious. It's a bit like mistaking correlation for causation, but it's even more general than that. It encompasses all sorts of dubiously related observations being interpreted as having some larger meaning.

This makes long-term decision-making difficult. Whenever anyone is faced with a major decision and has sufficient time to ponder it, they have no choice but to refract everything that happens through the lens of that decision. I'm tense this morning; maybe I shouldn't take that job. I slept really well; maybe I should ask Kiki to marry me. I'm irritable; maybe I should break up with Kiki. Breakfast doesn't taste right; maybe I should buy the minivan instead of the crossover. The sunset looks beautiful; maybe I should shave my head and get a tattoo. You get the idea. Some of them might make sense, some might not, but if you're spending a lot of time seriously thinking about shaving your head and getting a tattoo, that's what happens.