The Odd and the Wonderful

Rationalising about irrationality

05 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment

by Silbena in Uncategorized Tags: late at night, ponderings, seasons, slight angst, suspense, videogames

UPD 13-Sep-2010: While trying to sort out all the prompts for the next post, I realised that this one pretty much fills the one for

Day 21: Something illogical you think or do.

I actually had a pretty good day today, for once. Good on the scale that it’s raining now, and probably rather cold outside, but I don’t even care — yeah, me, the sun-loving, cold-hating little kitty-cat doesn’t care that it’s wet and cold outside (and why should I, I’m inside; but a lot of the time I do, so take that). Or, well, at least I had a good end of the day — it kind of began pretty shittily, with a headache and nausea that caused me to want to eat only frozen raspberries for breakfast and got my mother to nag about how I’m feeling sick just because I haven’t eaten properly, but I, personally, attribute it rather to my incredibly stupid hormonal cycle (though I wouldn’t tell that to her, since you can’t argue with The Ex-Nurse), which causes, along headaches and nausea and various cramps, this incredibly annoying irritability, hyper-sensitivity (because I’m always sensitive) and irrationality.

I’m a very rational human being — I like science, and I like logic. I’ve always been thanked in English for being able to construct a coherent, logical argument. I do like creative writing, too — but even in that, I like my thoughts to be organised, my intentions to be clear, and each and every thing that happens in a short story or in a novel to be rational, and to clearly and logically follow some other action. This applies even to human beings in my stories — except on a more emotional level. My stories are usually character-driven, and before I create anything else, I will create a character; and how I envision that character to feel and to think, that is where the logic of the story is. Everything has a place and a reason — even seemingly random and useless occurrences are usually there because I felt they would suit that spot there, and because later, they will develop into a character trait or a plot twist or something less significant than that.

I know you’re probably confused about where I’m going with all this, but be patient with me — this blog is one of those things that isn’t exactly very organised, logical and coherent, and there’s multiple reasons for that, too; ones that should be clear in the way I write and what I write about. Anyway. If you go into as superficial definitions as stereotypes, you could say that I’m pretty male in a lot of ways; in how I value rational logic (oh, except that I don’t fit those stereotypes at all, because as logical as I like to think that I am, I’m also pretty driven by emotion; but I think that even emotions are logical in some sort of a manner, and all you need to do is understand the origin of the emotion for it to be clear and rational as day — I don’t like the misconception that logic and emotions can’t go hand in hand) and how I’m incredibly unable to multitask. This is completely unrelated, but this should be mentioned, mostly for shits and giggles — especially since my significant other is always so eager to remind me that I can’t do basic things such as drinking and walking at the same time. The explanation for this is a lot more physical than the one for my usual inability to multitask — simple concentration on one thing at a time, I do something with 110% efficiency or not at all.

But I’m obviously not male, and I’ve got a stupidly retarded hormonal cycle to remind me of that. Even forgetting the physical unpleasantries, I would still hate it with a passion, because of what it does to my mind. Once every bleeding month, I become incredibly depressed over nothing in particular, and the smallest, usually perceived shortcomings of myself or the people around me will make me burst into tears. If there is no such outlet, I will be gloomy and depressed and lethargic for a few days. Then, I become irritable and impatient for the next, often going back to being the sarcastic, almost mean-spirited, too-good-for-you human being I was a few years ago. After this, the hormones usually decide to leave me alone and let me be considerably happy for the next few weeks — until it comes back.

The most annoying thing about this stupid cycle (you can probably tell how much I hate it from counting how many times I’ve referred to it as “stupid” — I was never very good with insults, *smiles sheepishly*) is that the extravagant, ridiculous extremes that my emotions fly to are so very real to me. I get incredibly depressed over someone dropping a cookie on the floor (an actual reference I use when I’m bawling over nothing in particular to note the world around me of how no-one died and that I’m actually rather alright), and at that moment, it is the end of the world, for me. Where it gets infuriating and bizarre is the notion that even when I’m feeling so depressed over the death of this cookie, I will still acknowledge how ridiculous I’m being. I could almost bet that 75% of the aforementioned irritability is my internal fury for not being able to contain my stupid, chemical-ridden brain. Those weeks are probably the only ones in which I will feel strongly about nothing in particular, and be just as irrational as women are, according to the stereotype, supposed to be, most of the time. It annoys me SO; and even more so, because there is actually nothing I can do about it. Just bitch and whine like the teenage girl I am, ugh.

So, that’s passing over another time, again — no-one’s dead yet, so I suppose that’s a good sign — and I’ve been having a fairly alright day. In this day, I witnessed once more how it is impossible for me to stay within word limits (writing a report for Chemistry on the industrial production of ethene — there are seven or so points we need to cover, and I’m in the middle of covering point 2, already having used half of the word limit), dabbled with The Sims 3 a bit again (just a bit, though, because I didn’t really have time to REALLY get into it) and talked on the phone with my significant other, the drummer deity, for some 45 minutes or so. God, that was one of the best conversations on phone that I’ve had for ages. Still, I wish he was home already. I wish next week wouldn’t be so busy. I wish it were holidays already. I wish it to be next weekend, when I’m supposed to get my copy of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep! Most importantly, I wish it were tomorrow, because I’m supposed to get French toast tomorrow, heeee.

Carpe diem, they say, and I endorse that idea — but sometimes it’s just so HARD. It’s hard to not wait for all of this awesome stuff; it’s hard to make yourself concentrate on probability (that I still don’t get; damn you, Markov chains) and on all this school stuff going on, because SPRING IS COMING and summer is almost here and IT’S ALMOST OVER.

Peace and French toast to everybody.