Wildcard II

Just a short text this time, and about myself too. I'm sure you were all missing my egoism by now.

So, I just thought that it was fascinating to follow the workings of my own mind after a disappointment. In this case, I failed my driving test today, postponing my license by at least another week and a half. I'd already been preparing myself for the failure beforehand by telling myself I didn't expect to pass since I was very uncomfortable with driving in general and didn't trust my own skills, despite knowing from Psychology classes that this kind of negative reinforcement is not a good way to prepare. Luckily during the test itself I managed to mainly concentrate on the task at hand without thinking of my mistakes, with a few unfortunate exceptions. I even thought it didn't go that badly as I was returning to hear my evaluation, though I knew I hadn't quite passed with flying colours.

Well, cue embarrassment while being trashed by the official evaluator - I feel that's quite natural. I had a few inklings of my brain attempting to feel unfairly treated but I squashed them intentionally because I knew I was just getting what I deserved. More interesting was the trip back, as my driving teacher very pointedly stayed silent about what I'd done wrong, letting me go over it myself. I noticed myself frantically grasping at the evaluator making a small mistake with my intentions and so making one of my mistakes seem larger than it actually was, trying to explain my failure that way. However, in all honesty, it doesn't matter one bit why I made a dangerous mistake if I made it, so I had to force myself to give up that kind of explanations.

Next in turn was blaming 'myself' - this was actually the most interesting part. When I realized I couldn't shift the blame on to somebody else, I tried to blame myself, but the parts of myself that felt separate from my actual 'self'. I blamed my personality, the way my mind works, some traits that would be best described as genetic... anything to feel as though it wasn't actually my fault, but the fault of my brain or body. I thought I'd never be a good driver because I hate driving, dislike cars in general and work poorly under pressure.

Fortunately I was keeping a close eye on my thoughts for just this kind of development and forced myself off that line of thought. However, it was surprisingly difficult. In fact, I'm not quite sure my self-study isn't just another method of avoidance, but generally I can't really go too far in analyzing my self or I'll never get to the end of it. It happened, I know what went wrong and I've got to focus on trying again in the future.

I'd like to pose a question - does anyone else recognize similar patterns of thought in themselves after a failure? Who do you blame, or do you blame anybody? Comments are welcome.