Just Stop

This morning for breakfast I had coffee with milk, fresh-baked bread with redcurrent jam, and a goat cheese omelette (made with a free-range egg, though not one from the farmers' market, which is on hiatus). Then I put on my snazzy new leather jacket and my headphones and listened to Blondie on my way to the office.

I am working on a paper about David Lewis's contextualist theory of knowledge for the Horse, and it is a slog. I banged on the keyboard for an hour or so and then went over to the math building to meet the cute but nonverbal mathematician for lunch.

I thought of a strategy to overcome shyness: pretend we are already friends. Just take it for granted that we will get along and be pals, and then act as if this has already happened. Why not? I do not have to worry about impressing these people; not to brag, but I have been asked out on so many dates since moving to Indiana that I am beginning to get the sense that I can write my own ticket. It is *their* job to impress *me.* So the mathematician and I went to a Korean buffet and I pretended we were already friends, and to some extent I think it went well, and beyond that extent I don't care, so there we go.

So many of my problems are problems for which the only solution is "Just stop that." I talk to myself, I pick at my fingers till they bleed, I bite my lips and grind my teeth, I fret about social interactions and blow them all out of proportion. You're right; the only solution is to just stop doing those things. A simple solution isn't always easy. I try to find tricks to make stopping easier. I wear gloves; I pretend that people already like me so I don't have to worry about making them. Sometimes these tricks work. Sometimes they don't. But I look pretty cute in gloves.