Paranoia II and Hanlon's razor

When your brain is working on two opposing thoughts at the same time:


Me: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

Also me: But it's so freaking obvious I'm being singled out here OMFG!


Ugh. It honestly sucks being me at times, because I can hold two perfectly opposing thoughts in my head at the same time, and believe both with a weight of certainty that you'd find difficult to shift. What do we call that, girls and boys? cognitive dissonance.


Sometimes it's fun and can prompt debate until the little grey cells finally decide which team they're rooting for, but other times it's just a source of terrible, almost debilitating anxiety and paranoia.


Two recent examples:


1) I enrolled on my course late on in the season. Ok, very late. Just last month, actually. All the other students seem to float around on invisible cushions of knowledge, secure that they know what they need to know in order to get through the academic year. Then there's me, drowning and clawing at any titbit of information because No, I'm not actually enrolled on that VLE board whence the information came. Now, was it a slip of the mind? Was it just an admin error? Or maybe they're just screwing with me so I'll drop out?


Me: All 3. Has to be. No other explanation.

Also me: But maybe...

Me: No, seriously - it's all 3 at the same time. Go stew on it some.




2) My eldest is due to go to Primary school (aka Elementary school etc.) in 2017 and we hear on the Mom Grapevine that there's a meeting at the local school for parents of the new-kids-to-be. No word from the school itself. No word from their Nursery (aka Daycare, Kindergarten). A letter surfaces, dated T-8 days but which was actually received at T-2 days with a tear-off RSVP to be handed in at T-4 days by the latest. (See where this is going?) Slip of the mind? Admin error? Screwing with us?


Me: All 3. Has to be. No other explanation.

Also me: But maybe...

Me: No, seriously - it's all 3 at the same time. Go stew on it some.


Meanwhile the rest of the moms have no letter and thus, in theory, do not know about this meeting (which is, by the way, tomorrow morning). I swear, if a letter DOES make its way to me, there will be a fairly sharp-assed response being sent back instead of that stupid RSVP.


As it stands, we have panic, anxiety and paranoia running a race in my head over who gets to chair the latest meeting of "How do we get through college?" with Schrödinger's Primary School meeting set to happen (and not happen) tomorrow morning causing me more anxiety because this is my firstborn's future we're talking here and I have some CONCERNS I'd like to talk to the school about, thanks very much.


It's all fun and games, until it's not.