Statistics

One of the most difficult things I have been trying to teach myself in this, a self-proclaimed period of attempted self-improvement, is that nobody - at least statistically - cares about me.

I don't mean to use the phrase with the acquired meaning they they dislike me, but I merely mean to say that nearly one-hundred percent of the world's population gives me no mind. I know, academically, that nobody else bothers to process my actions to the extreme extent that I do. I remember the most absurd things that, really, I shouldn't. Of course, now that I've started trying to think about them, I can't remember a damn thing. The moral of the story is that, while I am perfectly aware that nobody cares about my actions, I cannot seem to stop over-analyzing things I do and have done.

This minor obsession, egotistical as it might be, has been flaring up the last week as I have been performing something of an experiment with my driving. Rather than keeping up with the pace of traffic and blasting down 440 at 75mph every morning and afternoon, I have been relegating myself to a mere 5 miles per hour over the posted limit and making good use of my cruise control. Though I need more samples to call it a true experiment, the initial results are promising: my gas mileage jumped about 2.4mpg from an average tank of gas - up to 34.8 from an average of 32.4. I am guessing that my insistence on driving slower (or, more accurately, less quickly) will do a fair bit towards raising my average. In driving slowly, I continually fear that I will upset other people choosing to drive more quickly. I can sit in my car, perfectly aware of the fact that exactly zero of these other drivers will remember either me or my slightly slower rate of speed 5 minutes from now, yet I still feel some anxiety.

I do the same thing with countless social situations. It contributes to my lack of an adventurous spirit - for whatever reason, I have a crippling fear that people will remember me, that I will somehow offend someone to such a degree that they will remember who I am and how terrible a person I am.

Nobody cares (but me).