emotional relativity: i need dumber friends

quick update on work.

we ended up missing the ANTS deadline last weekend. alcherio said it was alright (which is good since he had said in the beginning that he knew it wasn't likely, and that was okay). but then he followed it up with rather extensive reprimand (one of his trademark lengthy emails). i know he's just tightening the screws because that's his job, and i also know that things generally find ways to work themselves out---but that doesn't make it any less crappy right now.

i remember i was reading in the news or something a while back that there was another one of those crack-pot pseudo-"medical" studies where they essentially "determined" that a person's happiness or contentedness with their life was most strongly correlated with their perceived relative intelligence to those around them. and in a messed-up sort of way, this almost seems to make some sense...

for instance, my parents, while relatively simple people (which is not a bad thing; i love them for it), seem to get by quite nicely (well, times when they fight with each other aside). and they're constantly telling me what idiotic things the people they know have done recently (i'm sorry, but there's no two ways about it: some of their friends are really scraping the shallow end of the gene-pool).

on the other hand, here's me. well, okay, most of the time i'm happy enough, but i seem to spend a huge percentage of my life stressed out or frustrated or worried about stuff, and most of it because i constantly feel like i'm just barely able to keep up with the people around me, if at all. i'm past actually thinking of myself as literally stupid (of course, i still have my moments, so except for certain times and on certain topics, si suppose), but i just feel like everybody else is better, faster, smarter, stronger, etc... and it wears me down.

anyway, i guess what i'm trying to say is that having someone else confirm these feelings of inadequacy by chewing you out for not being as stellar or productive as your peers, well, it sucks.

(yes, as a matter of fact, i do have a firm grasp of the obvious, thanks for noticing.)