I'm just your average Thundercats ho' (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} misplacedmind) wrote,@ 2008-10-22 20:32:00 |
|
the perils of ponderous thinking
I was charged, recently, with the task of spending some time each day imagining myself in various "dream jobs," a different one each day for a week.
The argument for this was based on a study which claimed to have found that paraplegics were notably happier if they spend some time each day daydreaming about walking.
My initial reaction was, "WTF? Wouldn't that just be depressing?" However, I decided to try it out anyway.
Last night, as I lay in bed anticipating sleep, I started imagining my first "dream job" - theoretical mathematician. It started out nice enough: lots of lovely images of long nights spent at white boards. However, my mind then did that THING it does, where it just can't let a good thing be. It was all downhill from there, no matter how I tried to spin it - lots of terrifying thoughts of how I'd have to be attached to a university, so I'd have to be a professor, and even if I could arrange it so that I ONLY taught classes relating to algebra (my favorite subject, at any difficulty level) I still would have to *teach,* which is something that terrifies me and that (not coincidentally, I'm sure) I'm rather terrible at. Not to mention the fear that I'd alienate all of my friends and family, and encourage rather than challenge my social phobias.
Sigh. Sometimes I can't tell whether I'm pragmatic, or cynical, or some warped and twisted combination of the two. I'm willing to keep giving this thing a try, really I am... but I just have no faith in my skills at "playing pretend." There's no reason to believe that any of my other "dream jobs" will fare any better. In fact, I would imagine that the most I would gain from this exercise is a sense of resignation towards my own life, since no "dream" job would ever be all it's cracked up to be. Not a bad lesson to learn, I suppose, but certainly not the increased sense of vicarious joy which I was promised, heh.
For all that I daydream a lot, it tends, I suppose, to be rather negative. I tend to like thinking about all of the bad things that could possibly happen, so I'm never unpleasantly surprised. I also don't like imagining good things, because then I could be disappointed. Pretty fucked up, huh?
I was charged, recently, with the task of spending some time each day imagining myself in various "dream jobs," a different one each day for a week.
The argument for this was based on a study which claimed to have found that paraplegics were notably happier if they spend some time each day daydreaming about walking.
My initial reaction was, "WTF? Wouldn't that just be depressing?" However, I decided to try it out anyway.
Last night, as I lay in bed anticipating sleep, I started imagining my first "dream job" - theoretical mathematician. It started out nice enough: lots of lovely images of long nights spent at white boards. However, my mind then did that THING it does, where it just can't let a good thing be. It was all downhill from there, no matter how I tried to spin it - lots of terrifying thoughts of how I'd have to be attached to a university, so I'd have to be a professor, and even if I could arrange it so that I ONLY taught classes relating to algebra (my favorite subject, at any difficulty level) I still would have to *teach,* which is something that terrifies me and that (not coincidentally, I'm sure) I'm rather terrible at. Not to mention the fear that I'd alienate all of my friends and family, and encourage rather than challenge my social phobias.
Sigh. Sometimes I can't tell whether I'm pragmatic, or cynical, or some warped and twisted combination of the two. I'm willing to keep giving this thing a try, really I am... but I just have no faith in my skills at "playing pretend." There's no reason to believe that any of my other "dream jobs" will fare any better. In fact, I would imagine that the most I would gain from this exercise is a sense of resignation towards my own life, since no "dream" job would ever be all it's cracked up to be. Not a bad lesson to learn, I suppose, but certainly not the increased sense of vicarious joy which I was promised, heh.
For all that I daydream a lot, it tends, I suppose, to be rather negative. I tend to like thinking about all of the bad things that could possibly happen, so I'm never unpleasantly surprised. I also don't like imagining good things, because then I could be disappointed. Pretty fucked up, huh?
