I perceive myself as abnormally cautious, hesitant, wanting to be thorough (sometimes to the point of inaction). Some of it’s anxiety-driven, some I suspect is a predisposition toward looking for threats and anticipating problems. I don’t say it as a good thing, but not necessarily a bad thing either. It makes me shy of leadership positions because I can be too plodding and uncertain to take immediate action. Sometimes I think it’s the times or a cultural thing though. I had little enough use of technology in the earlier parts of my childhood that I can remember the contrast between that and when I became an adult and started using high-speed internet regularly. There’s something about the pacing of things that changes. Not only on how you operate, but how society operates.

For example, a society that needs days or more to send a message from one place to another simply can’t move as quickly as a society that can instantaneously send a message across a great distance. This makes snap decision-making more common and more valued. It’s strange though because it’s not like this means society changes instantaneously. Rapid movement does not mean rapid change, necessarily, since the superstructure has to catch up to the base.

So you can get this “hurry up and wait” feeling a lot. “Why am I even rushing? For what? To where? Is time actually running out quickly or do I only perceive it that way because of the perceived pace of the world?”

I don’t know. I feel abnormally older than I am at times. Probably in that messed up childhood way, not actually wise from experience. Life is strange, but I am glad for diamat because it helps ground me in the sea of nebulous western ideologies.