Trying too hard

File this under "brains are funny."

Yesterday morning, while working out, I thought, "I need to get another big tub of plain yogurt soon; maybe today." (Plain yogurt, served up in a little glass jar, is my standard source of protein and calcium at lunchtime). As I have four rather than three days this week I need to be on campus over the lunchtime span, I knew my supply wouldn't quite hold out.

Then, later, when I went to make toast and found that the rackin-fratzen bread had gone MOLDY (several days before I would expect it should), I said to myself, "I need to get another loaf of Health Nut when I'm at the store."

So I remembered it as: I need to get two things at the store. (That's how I make my shopping lists most of the time. If it's really crucial, like I'm going to be doing a whack of baking for an event and I need stuff I don't ordinarily buy, I'll write out what I need to prevent last minute trips back. But usually, I just say "I know I need to pick up X number of things for sure" and that usually serves as sort of a mental string-around-the-finger.)

But then, my schedule got changed, as I was having to run out in the general direction of the grocery midday for more full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs (for a student's project) and I thought, oh, I can go to the grocery while I'm out there, run the stuff home, then come back here with the bulbs.

But I couldn't remember the two things I had to buy. I could remember the bread - probably because I was so irritated that I had to fix cereal instead of the toast I wanted, because of the mold - but I couldn't think of the yogurt.

I kept thinking "It's something from the refrigerated case" but I knew I had enough milk and eggs, and I had just recently bought a new orange juice.

So I figured: I'll go get the tubes, and if I can't remember the second thing, I'll just not bother with the grocery-store trip.

Then, while driving there - my mind on something else (I think I was playing "Guess the composer" with an unfamiliar piece that was playing on Sirius Pops), it jumped into my mind: Yogurt. I needed more plain yogurt.

So I was able to pick those items up in the same trip.

I find that happens to me a lot: if I try to think of something, I don't always remember it, but if I let my brain relax and think of other things, sometimes it comes to me. I find for me it's worst with the names of authors or actors - sometimes I'm reduced to kind of flailing and going, "You know, he was the guy in the thing. The guy in the thing!" but then 40 minutes later I'll be doing something else and all of a sudden I'll go, "Oh, darn...Edmund Gwenn. That's who I was trying to think of."

("Sylvia Scarlett" was on TCM yesterday morning just before I had to go to work. Darnit, why don't they show movies like that when I have time to WATCH them? Or maybe movies look more appealing when you know you have something else you have to do...)

I find that "trying too hard" also affects me in other ways. I actually think I teach better if I don't hyper-prep for the class....I do have to do SOME prep, but it's like there's a bell-shaped curve, where some intermediate value of preparation is better than NO review, but also better than scripting everything out so much that there's no room for "looseness."

And I really notice it with the piano stuff...if I get too uptight about "That passage I always screw up is coming up" I begin screwing up even before the passage...If I think too hard about what I'm doing, if I think too hard "gotta get this RIGHT," I wind up messing up. (I wonder if that was part of my dismal performance at the one-and-only recital I did... that I psyched myself out).

I also notice with learning things on the piano, there seems to be a tipping point...a point where I stop seeing the piece as a bunch of notes that need to be played and to see it more as, I don't know, "phrases" or something. It's about around the time that I start getting the piece memorized. (Yes, I learn most of the stuff I play by heart - at least temporarily. I'm not sure I could go back and reconstruct pieces I played six months ago straight from memory). That's the point where I can actually begin PLAYING the piece...it's also the point where I stop thinking so hard about it.

However, I still sometimes hang myself up by over thinking, especially sometimes at lesson. (It's frustrating to have played something through ten times JUST FINE at home only to start messing up when I'm playing it for my teacher.)