A while back, Jeff posted this. Recently, Carrie responded with this. It got me to thinking and I felt I wanted to add something, but all I came up with was this:

Interesting.

I think being ‘self-aware’ more often than not borders (or crosses into) what I tend to feel is overthinking things. And when you’re overthinking things, you’re over-complicating them.

That’s not to say there isn’t ever a time and place for that kind of processing, but I’m not sure it’s a regular part of the flow.

I tend to trust general instinct – and either I’m too stupid to know it doesn’t work or it does. And if it does, maybe it’s just an innate ability to do that same kind of processing without being so ‘self-aware’ about it? Which would mean that in the big picture it is a necessarily part of the flow, I guess. So who knows?

And by general instinct, I mean I don’t need many periods of reflection or sorting out thoughs, ideas, situations and things. Am I too dumb to know I’m not as happy and my situation not ideal as can be or am I smart enough to understand that it’s never going to be perfect and worrying about wringing every last ounce out of it is a perpetual excercise in frustration?

Which leads me to an interesting observation I made long before this conversation. Compared to my online circle of influence, I’m a balls out impulsive, just go-for-it type. But compared to my real-world (you know what I mean) circle of influence, I’m an overthinker – very precise and thought out. Not sure what that means or if it matters, but it’s always been interesting to me. And if I think back, it seems I’ve always held two circles of influence like this – even when “real world” was all that there was. I wonder what that says about me?