Moving into new situations is a great source of anxiety to me, and I wonder often why I find myself doing so over and over and over again, ad nauseum.  I think I’ve finally realized, though, that the new situations are a little scary because of the lack of knowledge about the situation — and that’s also exactly why I seek out change, to continue learning, picking up new knowledge.

It explains a lot about a lot of my life, actually.  Why I get bored with people and hobbies.  Why I’ve changed jobs so many times in my life.  Why I’ve never focused on one thing, instead becoming the proverbial jack of all trades.

I’m addicted to knowledge.

When I had my experience with CIPD backin the fall of 2003, it was terrifying, mostly because I had no real idea what was going on.  Playing detective made me feel better — I thought it was because it was distracting me from the spreading numbness in my arms and legs, but I think now it was because I was absorbing all sorts of useless (and a little bit of useful) information.  Once they had figured out what was wrong with me, I recall (probably incorrectly — I have the memory of a broken plate) not worrying at all about having CIPD.  The prescribed treatment of Prednisone would either work or it wouldn’t (it did); whichever, I knew what was wrong, and I could move on to the next thing.

It’s not just book knowledge (although I did read the encyclopedias that my parents had when I was ten, A-Z, cover to cover) (yes, nerd).  It’s knowledge of all kinds and contexts — experiential, data, whatever.  Which, thankfully, keeps me from reading all of Wikipedia in my spare time.

Not really going anywhere with this, other than recording it for posterity.  More useless data out here on the brave new InterFrontier.