In Which you can't drink less coffee than no coffee, no matter how hard you try

You guys, it is now officially winter. And suddenly it has become much colder (so much so that my fingers keep going numb as I try to type this, so it may have a higher-than-usual number of typos). Which would be fine if this was a book, or one of those montage sequences in a B movie (Twilight: Eclipse, anyone?), but which is definitely odd in real life. Since when does the weather change in line with the seasons? Usually everyone spends the whole first month of each season discussing how "if doesn't feel like Season X at all!" and so on.

I'm, uh, not really going anywhere with that, I just wanted to mention it, mainly because I'm typing at about half my usual speed, what with the aforementioned finger numbness, which is making it it strangely hard to write. Usually I just more or less type as I think, which not only gives this blog that wonderfully unstructured stream-of-consciousness thing you all know and love/tolerate-with-mounting-exasperation, but also means that I don't have to stop typing and try to figure out where I was going, or indeed had got to, with the line of thought I've written down. But mostly typing as slowly as this makes it feel clunky and ungainly. Like by the time I get to the end of a typed sentence, I've forgotten what I was going to say next. Like my thoughts get bored waiting for my hands to catch up and just wander off.

I wonder if this is why I talk so fast too? Surely it must be the same thing. It's odd, because I can never tell when I'm doing it. I'm just innocently talking to someone at what seems like a perfectly ordinary speed when suddenly they go "For the love of all that's holy, will you please just slow down! I haven't heard anything you said in the last 3 minutes, but at that speed, it could easily have been the complete works of Tolstoy! In the original Russian, for all I could make out!" And I'm all "Gosh, really? Uh, sorry. What was this last bit you actually understood?".

Usually at this point I make the spurious claim of having "drunk too much coffee this morning" (which is what you might uncharitably call a bald-faced lie, since usually I have drunk no coffee at all. Although it's almost true, in the sense that any coffee at all is usually too much coffee for someone as excitable as me. I tend to get so hyped that I actually bouce. Literally, not figuratively. Well, both. So in that sense, I've had "almost too much coffee" since any additional amount would be "too much".) Anyway, that seems easier than saying "sorry, I just talk quickly, would you mind trying to listen rather faster?". Because that inevitably leads to the question of why I don't just slow down.

But really, have you even tried that? It always sounds really strange and unnatural to one's own ear. I used to have an Ancient history lecturer, many years ago in the Good Old Days of lectures in the Quad and tutorials about things which were actually exciting and involved swords and so on, who had, I suspect, taken this advice at some point. Probably, when you spoke at a speed which seemed natural to him hesoundedlikethistoeveryonewhowaslisteningtohim. So someone had told him to slow down. Problem is, he didn't then talk normally, like this (with spaces between all the words as standard) or even in that deeply annoying way of many lecturers who talk ... like ... this, ... so ... slowly ... that ... you ... lose ... focus ... between ... every ... word ... because... it ... is ... impossible ... to ... pay ... attention ... at ... that ... speed (which is my most hated thing for lecturers to do, it makes them un-attend-to-able). Oh no, not this guy. He always talked as if each sentence had been caught spying in the First World War and had been marched out of the Tower of London at dawn, stood against a wall, and then shot full of punctuation at random by a firing squad. So strong in,, fact was, ,,, this impression that I ,,, oftencompletelylosttrack . of what was happenening,,, in the lecture because ,, all I could ,,, think about was rifles loaded with 22 cali...bre commas, ,,, and sentences asking to face the squad without,,, a blindfold. It was good times.

What I'm saying here is that it sure is difficult to "just talk more slowly!". Which would be fine if I ever remembered that sometimes I talk so fast that people can't quite hear everything, and tried to be less randomly allusive all the time. I think this may make the task or understanding me near-impossible some times, especially when I blithely assume that people have the same background knowledge as me. It's ok when I talk to patients or people on the bus, or whatever, because then I remember not to assume that they're the same as me. But with people whom I perceive as being similar to me, I fear that I can become dangerously obtuse.

I was at the doctor the other day trying to explain what the symptoms were that I was getting with this crazy hypothyroidism thing (did I tell you about that, Gentle Reader? Apparently I have hypothyroidism. Go figure) and I said "I feel like my mind is falling away like wet cake. It's like Macarthur Park in here!". Honestly, I'm just lucky that the guy happens to be in the right demographic and know his Richard Harris or he would have put me down as having 'clang associations', which are totally a schizophrenia thing (and that I definitely do not have, which is for the best). This is in stark contrast to the time when, when asked in a tutorial what my suggested management would be for a baby of low birth-weight, I answered "washing in a jug". Yeah, turns out that maybe about 7 people in the world are familiar with the last song on Cream's Disraeli Gears album, "Mother's Lament". Everyone probably thought I was a callous fool. Still, that's a nil-all draw there, because I might not be able to guage my audience, but they're missing out on a pretty rad and random song.

All this meta-thought is brought on, in case you're wondering, not only by the numb fingers (although seriously, does there need to be another reason? It's really really annoying to try and keep track of what I was going to say while waiting for the typing to catch up. Especially since I keep having to retype things because of the typos. I spelled "meta-thought" "meat-thought" about 6 times in a row just then) but also by the fact that I foolishly read a bit of that other Med student blog I mentioned back in the day; Sharp Incisions.

Reading that sort of thing always makes me feel terribly self-conscious. It's not bad, it's quite good, even (and hello and sorry for that turn of phrase, if you're reading this, Incisive Blogger). But she refers to her cats as the Feline Incisions, and talks about "shifts" at hospital (I will charitably assume that she actually moonlights as a nurse or something, and doesn't mean her lessons at Clinical School), and she just seems so... so incredibly, wholesomely inspired by her clinical experience. It's a sensation not unakin to watching someone singing a very sincere song with their eyes closed on stage in a small venue.

I read things other people have written within the genre of blogging-about-the-quotidian-minutiae-of-one's-life and I wonder; is that how I sound? If you glance to the right you will see a Blogroll of other blogs friends of mine write, and strangely, I never have that experience reading their stuff. I'm interested, or amused, or pleased, or whatever, but never do I feel self-conscious. Maybe it's because it's so different to my stuff? Spencer's is more a collection of "Works" than a blog per se (and if you haven't read it, do) and Catie's is always really well thought out and articulate (and concise), and usually about something deliberate, and Jordans and Alex's, when they update, which is never, are specific rant-sorts-of-things about politics and philosophy of that wonderful take-no-prisoners-men-this-is-the-internet variety which must be so surprising for the unwary newcomer. Most of the others are travel blogs or similar. Maybe that's all there is to it. The Incisor is just so like me in terms of subject matter that it just throws me into contrast? Plus she makes medicine-themed in-jokes, and I know I should stop making so many in-jokes that no-one could possibly understand, myself. Maybe noticing the speck in her eye makes me more aware of the plank in my own. (Also, man, I hate that translation. "Plank" cannot possibly be the word in the original Hebrew or whatever. That always makes me think of this image and that's not good in any circumstances (it's nothing awful, in case you're worried about NSFW-ness, just that old picture of the moon with a rocket in its eye). Oh my goodness, in the middle of a sentence about how I need to stop making references that not everyone gets, I just did it again. Sorry to all those of you who didn't go to a religious school and are therefore not down with your Matthew 7:3).

Probably the thing is also that I feel condescending and slightly critical of her blog, despite the fact that she (presumably) doesn't know that I might be reading. Which is guess is something that it would disconcert me to actually know (rather than just strongly suspect) of my own writing, again. I deal poorly with criticism, as I think we've established. Or maybe it's just the "Feline Incisions" thing. I mean, it could definitely be that.

It's a good thing I don't have a cat, is all.