So who am I?
As I am a little sceptical about online tests, I decided to write a description of myself instead. As I believe this forum is visited by some really knowledgeable people, I also believe that I am not wasting my time here, something that would be the case on most of the forums on the internet. Here we go:
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To begin with, I am a very private person who keeps a very long distance between me and other people. There are a few exceptions but they are essentially confined to my immediate family and even then it is not like I actually reveal even half of what is truly going on within me, or what I am thinking. I seem to have a longer distance between myself and my closest friends than they have between each other, although I don’t know if this is due to that I do not share interests in the same degree. At school I do socialize as long as the people in question are interesting enough, but I can’t get away from the feeling that I am floating along a river only to make sporadic contact with the shore, as opposed to actually staying there. It seems like it is a lot easier to get acquaintances as opposed to close friends, partly as relationships develop slowly for me.
I am completely unable to engage in small talk and very quiet when meeting new people. Talking for its own sake bore me to tears, and I would rather do something comparably productive such as watching paint dry rather then listen to small talk. I can stand discussions relating to school if necessary together with discussions about odd occurrences such as “what will that man do with his 2 meter plastic pipe on a damn island?” If it is about personal relationships, and it’s lacking novelty value, or your oh so cute dog, then expect to be ignored. With all this, notice thought that I can definitely appear social with people that I know, but often with a fairly large distance. I prefer intellectual subjects.
I can be perceived as arrogant in some instances, but to me it is only a confidence in my own abilities. Fools attempting to come off as anything more than they are are on other hand worthy of nothing but contempt. The same goes for people that try to regulate anything that I do just because they can’t keep their noses out of what I am doing. Constructive criticism, sure that is fine, even though I might take it personally as a personal failure, but plain bitching? No thanks. In these cases I can certainly be rude, but I prefer to just react with really caustic sarcasm.
My mood is generally fairly stable. Of an odd reason people outside my immediate family tend to label me as *very* calm, while my family believes that I have a very hot temperament. I do not believe that one necessarily is wrong, but rather that it does take a lot and fairly particular things to actually piss me off, but when you do, then watch out. The best way to do it is to be an idiot. My default view of life is fairly cynical but yet optimistic, as I hardly see a need to be dwell on the negative aspects of life, but instead a need to either accept them or react. When the circumstances change, then my mood might change. If I suddenly get my hands on something interesting to do, then I can become very enthusiastic for a while. On the other hand it is rare for me to be really sad; it is more common to just be negative. Sadness would be confined to a few select experiences. Mostly I just notice “damn, oh well better luck another time”.
This doesn’t mean that I lack emotions. I just constantly struggle to keep them under control and preventing them from being discernable from the outside. I do not in any way feel like I am involved in the characters in a movie, I can be drawn into the general theme and setting however. I have at times been emotionally involved at the cinema, but this a lot due to my high awareness for music and the general setting, hence it is the music in the film together with the general setting that manages to move me. An example of this could be a thing I saw posted on the net that consisted of some assorted gore/human suffering/etc made into a video with a sound track. I found myself being able to almost completely detach from the actual scenes, the sound track on the other hand…
This brings me to another thing. I treat my interests very seriously. I very rarely approach things in the general “please entertain me” way of the rest of society. Music is something I take very seriously and I listen to very varying forms of music, from classical music to obscure metal. For me it is an art form and it works, as I once saw someone put it, as “a window to another world”, not to be interpreted as mere escapism, but rather due to curiosity. The same goes for literature and might explain why I actually enjoyed “War and Peace”, and didn’t see it as a chore to do for school. This of course does not mean that I do not enjoy entertainment once in a while, it is necessary for a human being, but then I would rather spend my time with a complex strategy game as opposed to a mindless FPS game.
All this might be factor contributing to that I strongly dislike places like pubs and what is referred to as “parties”. In my opinion the only thing more annoying than an idiot is a drunk idiot. You are free to enjoy these if you want, just don’t expect me to do the same. I completely feel like a fish out of the water in these places as what I experience seems completely unlike what the rest are enjoying. This, however seems to have the side effect that my chances of not being a single are close to zero, hardly helped by my reluctance to take the initiative. I fear that my answer to the question “Do you love me?” would be a no, even if it happened to be the case and no one else was present, secretly hoping that some other sign would give away that the opposite was true, yet fearing this.
I tend to set high standards for my performance, or perhaps using the goal is a better word, as often the standards are essentially equal to perfection and anything else is a failure. This means that I am a born perfectionist who is not satisfied unless I could not have done better, something I rarely believe in. I have a few loosely defined and changing goals in life that I am constantly working towards, but it is not like I have a detailed plan on how to do it. I will deal with the particular problems when it is necessary, why work out a definite plan that won’t work? It sounds like a waste of energy to me.
As a whole I tend not to be organised only work out a very rough plan whenever I deem it necessary to complete the task at hand. I do not plan my life as a whole. The last notes in my calendar were written a month ago by my mother in a futile attempt to make me “organised”. On the other hand I began to work from the beginning in a university course I had an exam in yesterday because I knew that it was going to be a lot of work, and even if I can do a lot of work the last week, I know that I would rather do a little work every day rather than having to work fanatically the last days, even if I am capable of it if necessary.
On now we move on to another subject, that is neatness. I personally do not see me as particularly messy, notice the key word here “personally”. According to the standards of some of my relatives, I ought to take care of it better, but I attribute it to a higher tolerance level for chaos. I just don’t need everything in a perfect order, perhaps partly due to that I am oblivious too it. To have my dishes spread out is not a nuisance, neither is it to have some papers all over the table. On the other hand I am not filthy, as I take care of it if it reaches a critical level, or if it is in the way.
Sometimes this can result in fairly odd situations. I knew that I had to bring out the vacuum cleaner due to dust lying on the floor that I had brought in after a walk in the forest, but when did I do it? Not on a normal time, but right before that I was supposed to run off to a dinner at university, in spite of having thought about it for days, all the while waiting for “inspiration”. I do not care very much about my appearance as long as I meet my own standards, which happen to be fairly dark, often single coloured, and ordinary clothes with jeans. I won’t ever combine a blue shirt with black jeans, and such other horrible colour combinations, but that is about it. I have never EVER cared for fashion, and my mother usually either had to force me to go with her or buy clothes, or buy them herself.
I could write a few words about my interest. I feel that I have way too many interests and too little time to spend on them. I enjoy most forms of reading as long as it is not “romance novels”, and music. I am also an avid fan of different forms of games, primarily strategic games, and I belong to the few who actually enjoy playing a game with a 50 page rule book with VERY small letters in it, and no nice graphics, only dry markers. The most of the fun in this, I derive from understanding how to win, not to win, even though I still dislike losing a lot. I am very inclined to begin with a new hobby, but to actually finish all these pet projects seems impossible. And that doesn’t count all my planned projects, which probably outnumber the actually begun ones even more.
One thing that I enjoy immensely is solitary walks, particularly if it is outside the city or it’s dark. Walking in the moonlight on/around the golf course next to where I used to live was a wonderful experience, and allowed time both for reflection or a wonderful setting that enhance the listening experience for certain types of music. I still do some of these walks, although the surroundings are a lot less interesting.
One thing that I really ought to take care of better is regular exercise, but often I just lose interest or forget it if I try to make it a habit. This might be a reason to why I have made it end in itself to use my bike unless absolutely necessary, and not to use elevator unless absolutely necessary either. Unbelievably enough this seems to keep me very fit together with some other exercising that can be done at home, as I just won’t ever go to a gym. I am almost bordering on being underweight, although this is not the cause of my somewhat irregular eating habits, but rather by a very high metabolism. If I often buy the same sort of food, it’s not due to a need for consistency, but rather because I just can’t be bothered to think about something new as it is not a priority for me.
It is about time to move on and in to my mind now, isn’t it? I could begin to write a little about my abilities. I am in many ways a renaissance man, unlike a lot of my old class mates who were fairly specialised. I am a quick learner and am able to learn most things with ease, with the exception of a few physical activities, for example I was never very good at football, partly because I lacked the cutthroat attitude there as a child. There was only one person on my school that actually was able to outperform me, but not by much, in math, and he scored in the top 10 of our age in the final a nationwide competition in my country.
I have a knack for language, particularly if it is written, and my dear teacher described my ability when it comes to putting the language together as “almost unique”, performing a speech is another story as I am not too fond of it. Tell me a word, and I will most likely write it down correctly, even if I have never seen it before, as long as it is not an exception to the rules. I never needed to study much grammar, but rather went with my feeling for what was right. Another thing to discuss here could be the fact that I of some reason also performed very well in the arts. I had talent there that I have never put to much use as the course was always set towards the sciences.
My memory is brilliant, and I can remember surprisingly much of what I learn in my first years in school. If I am interested in something, then the potential is almost infinite if I am trying to remember it. The hook is that I have to be interested in it. I generally learn the general structure of something almost immediately but have to work more to remember exact names of the parts, even if I know what they are, do and are located. Still, I tend to remember these details fairly easily.
My reasoning is fairly odd and seems hard to understand for a lot people; often I have a heard time to translate my understanding of something into something easily explainable to other people. While reading something in a newspaper I might make an association which is often met with a “What?” In these cases it is not worth the effort to explain what I was thinking about. A lot of the time my thinking is nonverbal or supported by only a few words thrown in.
Often my mind feels like it is drifting away and branching off into different directions. Unless I have something particular in mind, I have a hard time to focus my thoughts; this is in stark contrast to when I have something in mind, which results in a complete focus on the idea in question. When talking with someone, I often have to make a conscious effort to return to what we were talking about earlier and settle it, as I otherwise would derail the topic too much. This is exactly how I read on the internet as well.
One thing that I often find myself doing is thinking about how something is interpreted or perceived, rather than what is perceived in the first place, I walked past an advertisement a few days ago which portrayed a pretty attractive woman’s face. I do not remember what the advertisement was about, but I looked at it to almost immediately reflect about the supposed link between the product and “beauty”, “happiness” and other promised dreams, all the while seeing it as an insult to my intelligence. Then, as usual and always a bit surprising, it occurred to me that people actually are fooled by this, something that makes me worry about out future.
Another example is when someone told my class a compliment after the introduction days. It went something like: “You are the best!”, and I immediately thought: Would you tell us the opposite? It is just another social expectation to say this to please the crowd. A compliment from someone who can not say the opposite is not worth much. I am also very sensitive to the choice of words by an author. By looking at how it is written, you can see the author’s opinion about the subject by analysing the choice of word. I remember looking at an article about Ralph Nader before the previous election and reacting upon how obvious it was (to me) that the author wanted him to resign and not “steal” votes from Kerry.
I am good at guessing/inferring where a given set of data will lead me. In a class, the professor mentioned a thing about the Chernobyl accident. This was enough for me to, together with the certain background info about a structure within the body, immediately realise why a certain action was undertaken after the accident, something that he then explained for the next 30 seconds. On a dinner, I heard a funny story. In this case I began to quietly laugh long before the story was finished, as I already knew what the point was going to be, and it was quite funny. I felt rather amazed that most people actually needed to hear the punch line; they hadn’t drunk that much from what I knew...
I am much more interested in theory than I am in application as I see it as a lower order necessity. Even when I learn about information meant for practical application, it is often the understanding of how it works that interests me more than what you could do. For example, if I learn that you can do this if you know that, then I am happy about *learning* this, not because “ah now I can do this!” This might explain my interest in philosophy I guess… I am constantly searching for the “truth” and trying to further my understanding of the world.
When I am walking somewhere I tend to have my focus inwards with some focus outwards just in case something interesting occurs. This means that I do not notice anything that is labelled as “less than interesting”. I am completely oblivious to these things. I generally just turn my focus inwards and enjoys my inner world. This reminds me of that perhaps I should mention that I am perfectly content with being alone for long periods of time.
I dislike to be asked about binary choices as there is always a different way to approach the situation in my eyes. I can be more concerned here with what the question leaves out rather than what the questions provides me with. The key words here are: “If we interpret it this way then…” To summarise this, I like to look for possibilities but my life is not dominated by it. Instead it tunes in whenever it is needed, which means often, for me as a tool.
One thing that I used to do as a child was to escape into imagined fantasy world, this could be inspired by a recent activity or just because I felt like it. Some of these things were completely independent of each other but throughout out the years I had somewhat of a main project which over the years turned into a world on its own. As it matured, the focus drifted from a central character representing me there, to a story that I built but did not have a relation to. The fun thing is that this world (Fantasy themed) has continued with me to this day, and I am still continuing the story. In a way it represents an abstract playground for my ideas about the world and not only escapism. (Thanks a lot for being anonymous here!)
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Originally Posted by vague
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