An apple a day keeps the doctor away, although studies have shown that sugar is sugar, even if it comes from apples, which suggests maybe you shouldn’t be eating apples, since studies have also shown that sugar is toxic even at very low levels in rats, causing irreversible damage to both the brain and reproductive organs. But also if you’re going to go “whole hog” on quitting sugar, you risk becoming one of those people who can’t eat at restaurants and dourly refuses birthday cake, etc. And that might make you socially isolated, which studies have shown is almost as bad for your brain as a diet of Twizzlers and industrial-grade particle board.
Actions speak louder than words, although participation in social media is becoming crucial aspect of applying for jobs and launching one’s career, so if you’re the all-action type that cringes at the idea of self-promotion, well then you’d better start applying for blacksmithing apprenticeships, because your notion of accomplishment is so quaint as to actually be medieval. But at the same time, if you spend every hour of every day curating your dumb Tumblr, you’re never going to develop any actual skills and will eventually be exposed for the fraud you really are, your abundance of Twitter followers only serving to make your breakdown even more public and shameful.
A rising tide lifts all boats, cracking your boat in half because you forgot to adequately lacquer the bottom and rid it of the embarrassingly thick forest of barnacles that has now taken hold and will continue to thrive while your poor skiff rots away on the sea floor and you remain on land, never to know the majesty of transatlantic boat travel.
They say a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, which is all well and good until you consider the tragic opportunity cost of retaining your one mediocre bird while ignoring the other, better birds, which probably aren’t all that much harder to catch and are there, right in front of you, just waiting to be plucked from the bush and grilled right up.
Any port in a storm…is an okay thing to think if you want to be one of those pathetic people who never endured a big squall and so remain stuck in a state of perpetual adolescence until they wind up timidly online dating from their parents’ basement at age 40.
Sure, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but what if all this anxiety about being yet another cog in the capitalist machine is actually just a front for reluctance to fully engage with your life, or clinical depression, or an ultra-capitalist urge to do the best and most lucrative work instead of gradually finding quiet fulfillment in whatever perfectly good job you wind up with?
They say don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But what if it’s, like, a really cool basket, and seems to be the best basket for containing your eggs? And you don’t have that many eggs anyway, and, frankly, egg creation can be an exhausting process that, if hurried, leaves you nutrient deficient. Better to plop them all into a single high-quality basket made of some kind of Amish wicker. Plus, if you think about it, a lot of terrible things could happen if you’re trying to wrangle multiple baskets. Even aside from acts of God that could destroy you and your prudent number of baskets, there’s always the possibility that negotiating all of them could ironically make you more likely to trip, so instead of successfully carrying your one perfectly good basket full of eggs you wind up with literally hundreds of baskets bouncing every which way, eggs smashed all over the ground, bleeding yellow yolk onto the sidewalk.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But you know who has no problem venturing? A sociopath, that’s who. And you don’t want to be a sociopath, or wind up with some kind of STD after a drunken romantic liaison, do you? Do you?
HAVE YOU READ MY MIND?
Are you reading my thoughts?
I’m going to send this to people when I want them to understand how I worry so much (but only if I really trust them, because what if they see this and think I’m too strange and never want to talk to me again).
It’s… it’s like reading my internal monologue.
Should I post a comment saying this article is like my internal monologue? I hope people like it, but it seems really uncreative and snappy. There are so many people who are soo witty and cool. What would they post? *mentally sighs* I could include a short quote from my actual thought process… that seems like it might add enough to the comment to make it worth reading. Ugh, stop spell-checking and press submit already.
Not even kidding, there MANY, so many conversations with my partner where what I say is almost exactly like this.
It’s been 32 minutes since ocwut commented, is that too long ago to comment? It’s probably weird to comment now. She’ll think it’s weird. Now it’s 34 minutes. Her comment was way better than mine. This is dumb. I should just delete this.
Throws self away
you’re never going to develop any actual skills and will eventually be exposed for the fraud you really are,
Oh, look, I see that just as I always worried, the thoughts in my head will show up printed like paper for everyone to see.
Look before you leap.
and also
She who hesitates is lost.
and also
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
But…but… *expires from stress*
The First Law of Folklore: For every folklore, there is an equal and opposite folklore.
Second Law of Folklore: EVERYTHING cures warts, one way or another.
Now I’m wondering if non-anxiety is just being able to put a period at the end of your thoughts instead of a comma or question mark.
Are you wondering??? Or are you wondering. You seem calm. And sure. Well done.
That’s…possibly the best analogy I’ve ever heard to describe those states of mind.
Too real.
In all seriousness, is this anxiety?
I have never thought I was anxious, just a very thorough decision maker. Who tries weigh up the positives and negatives of every probable future stemming from a decision (for all – well let’s be realistic – most decisions).
Only so that she can decide properly, you understand. And it only gets stressful when I do it wrong.
Hmmmm
GPOY. all of it. thanks for getting creepily in my head again, The Toast.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But how do you know if it ain’t broke? What if it’s just barely coping, not quite broken yet? Or what if it’s deteriorating in a way you can’t perceive, an internal gear slipping slowly but inexorably into dust, and someday it will break irreparably and you’ll never see it coming or know why it happened?
Shit
I hang with academics and all I could think was how “us” this is. And I too thought it was just being deliberate and thorough, though we don’t deny being an anxious bunch.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, unless you deal in horse teeth.
I feel like the people behind the Trojan horse ruined gift horses for EVERYONE.
(Not that it’s the same thing, because really. If there were ever a gift horse that *should’ve* been looked in the mouth, it was probably the Trojan horse, which did it even have a mouth that could be looked in? There’s your tip-off. EVERYONE, ALWAYS LOOK GIFT HORSES IN THE MOUTH.)
Plus, you TOTALLY SHOULD look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s just common sense. The whole point is to find out the horse’s age, and if someone’s just passing off their ancient horse on you as a “gift” so that now you get to pay its board and absurdly expensive vet bills and so on, well, really, that someone isn’t much of a friend and gift horses ain’t cheap, people. Which is why you should also conduct a thorough investigation for flaws & blemishes. Or maybe just don’t trust people who sort of sidle up to you and are like, “Hey girl, I heard you like horses, here’s a gift horse,” and then drop the lead rope and run.
(Oh god why am I writing all this again? I think it’s funny and I’ve always wanted to vent about that really horrible dumb aphorism, but probably no one else on here is going to think it’s funny, and what’s my childhood trauma with gift horses, anyway. Oh great here I go making it worse. Shut up self shut up shut up shut uuuup!)
Maybe if I send this to my partner she will understand how the other weekend my cat scratching our toddler’s face ended up with me worrying that I might never be able to write again.
Yes, I noticed that just from leafing through it! Everyone had similar bad ideas about treatments for asthma, for instance. It's really a very interesting book; it's kind of a shame we have no real use for it here. (We don't even border Ohio, and this is not a research university.)
*Googles madly*
I like this Amazon review: "…in 'Travel and Communication' under the sub-heading 'Rabbits, Hares Crossing in Front of One' we find 15 beliefs on that particular topic."
This book sounds delightful.
Great minds think alike… but what if that’s just the hive mind complimenting itself so that everyone thinks it’s OK to think alike, and those thoughts aren’t really that “great”?
Yeah this is my life. I grew up with BDD without knowing it, and while getting over that was huge and wonderful, it did make me realize how vulnerable we are and how much we can rationalize things to ourselves, so it means I constantly question myself on things (am I rationalizing right now? How does this compare to other situations? Is it normal to do this? etc.). Good times.
Working in a library with a big folklore collection is basically my dream.
Painfully accurate! I don’t know whether to punctuate that statement with a smiley or frowny face.
:):
It’s the catdog of smilies.
It's pretty great, but no one uses the books because we don't really have any folklore in the curriculum. It's so hard to get rid of them though because they're so nifty and a lot of them have great illustrations!