I was musing about this in my personal journal, but then decided that it's probably either universal enough or funny enough to warrant a blog post.
Everyone has pet peeves. They can reveal much about us, or in this particular case, underline something I already knew about myself and remind me how pervasive this problem is.
I put a lot of my self-worth in my "intelligence." I put it in skeptical quotes because mine is a very specific brand of intelligence: the memory-wordy-musical kind. I remember things well, I use uncommon words and I got musics. My math skills are tenuous; I understand the concepts, but I understand them from a verbal standpoint. I remember that 5 - 3 = 2, not because I am mentally fleshing out the images of 5, 3, and 2, but because I remember the sentence "Five minus three equals two." And in elementary school when I was learning basic addition, I added numbers up to eight not by counting on fingers or other visualizing methods, but by rhythmically counting up. To reach a solution to 6 + 8, I would say "Six" to myself, and then say "SEVEN - eight - NINE - ten - ELEVEN - twelve - THIRTEEN - fourteen" with that specific syllabic emphasis (hint: I was counting out two full measures in 4/4, stressing beats one and three, unconsciously) because it just felt right. That felt like eight. And to stop in beat 3 of the second measure felt like seven. To stop in beat 1 of the second measure felt like five. Past eight, I would lose my place. You can imagine how well this worked out as I got older. But words and musics, I has them.
So, particularly because of my memory smarts, I'm pretty accustomed to being able to get the right answer, to learn the rules and routines quickly, and to do my tasks well and correctly. And I put a lot of stock in being smart. It's become more and more apparent to me how much I put that memory to work in every aspect of my life as of late, especially in relationships. I had the usual push-pull as a teen, but now...if I did something that seemed to cause you to snap at me? I'll probably go out of my way not to do it again. I asked you for something and you said no, but your no was due to a temporary deterrent? I *still* will probably not ask you again. I needed something and you were in a bad mood and blew me off? I will either conclude that I can't depend on you for what I need or that what I need is frivolous. Something in me makes me think I can learn all the rules of people and if I just learn them all and follow them all, I won't get snapped at, won't be disliked, and (most importantly) won't be considered stupid. Because people are totally static and never develop or change! (That's facetiousness, in case you can't tell)
The pet peeve that brought on this deluge of navel-gazing introspection is: receiving unsolicited advice. This drives me insane. Now, of course, there are times when I am able to excuse it. If I were to, say, draw the hem of my robe over a candle and set it afire, I would not only tolerate a "YOUR ROBE IS ON FIRE!" from you, I would likely welcome it. An "AAAAAAAH!!" with much pointing would also suffice. And I am not a complete idiot: I realize that advice is sometimes helpful and even occasionally needed. I often times actually solicit advice from people. But getting pointers I didn't ask for is so annoying to me as to be cringeworthy. If the advice is something I didn't know that is relevant to the situation, it will bother me because by the time I embark on some task, I'm supposed to have learned enough about it to do it without help; if I still need help in the execution phase, it means I'm stupid. If the advice is (1) something I already knew, (2) not necessarily relevant to the situation, as often happens when someone doesn't know enough about it to be giving advice, or (3) something I know to be inaccurate, it takes effort to conceal my anger. Because in those cases, someone underestimated my knowledge or abilities, but my Rules of People dictate that I can't correct them because that's defensive/immature/unladylike/whatever. So there I am, either actually being stupid or being perceived as stupid and without a dern thing to do about it except bottle the frustration and pop the top right here on this blog!
So that's one of my big flaws. I try to get around it by not doing things I haven't extensively researched or studied, or by saving new tasks for when I am alone. It's not that I believe I should never require help - I seek it pretty often - but that I should require help at a certain time. I treat the whole world like school. I learn about a potential task or project by Googling it and asking other people about it - this is the studying phase. When I set out to do it, that's the test phase. And at the test phase, you're supposed to know it and not need any further assistance. If you haven't properly prepared, you fail the test. So when I get unsolicited advice that I actually needed, I feel like I've failed a test. And when I get some that I didn't need, I feel like I'm being accused of failing.
I hope that in this exercise in transparency I have made someone else feel a little bit better about one of his or her particular thorns.
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