Driving my mom back to her hotel, talking about how lousy people's operating psychological theories tend to be. Of course, she wanted examples, overly abstract, that's me. Doesn't make me wrong, of course.

Dime store psychology, in my experience that means true things people don't want to hear about.

It's weird, understanding people pretty well, not being willing to use that information strategically. Used to, everything went swimmingly & I was miserable. Now everything goes down in flames & I'm miserable, at least I have a good reason for it.

So, anyway, I can be really infuriating, sometimes people think that that's me being manipulative, like my main interest in life is being infuriating. Might not be very nice to say, but the truth is, when I'm being manipulative, people mostly do what I want & they don't think I'm being manipulative.

Caused a lot of unhappiness a while back trying to be up front & aboveboard when what was wanted was coddling, couldn't do it, cared too much to do it, probably should've just bitten my lip & done it.

Maybe my main interest in life is being infuriating.

Anyway, it's what I'm good at.