On Psychological Mismatches

There are moments when consciousness jumps a groove, where the world as it is and the world as it seems are two very different things.

I went to the grocery story. I needed instant oatmeal, I’d exhausted my supply on Thursday and neglected to buy more. Clearly, a lack of oatmeal would do me no good when breakfast time came around tomorrow.

My purchase made, I drove home. It was (and still is) an utterly gorgeous day; I have laundry on the clothesline, there are patches, even large swathes of blue sky poking through the billowing white clouds, the sun is out, and while it’s not exactly warm, today feels like genuine spring.

I got lost driving back. Not physically lost. Psychologically lost. The roads went precisely where I knew they would. I didn’t end up in the next county or the next state. Yet, for whatever reason, my mind told me I was in a different place. A different state, to be precise.

There was something about the trees and the clouds and the sky and the way the air itself felt that made me suddenly feel as though I were in North Carolina. The road was clearly not North Carolina, it’s a road I drive every day on my way to work, and yet, my consciousness had skipped a groove.

It’s a disconcerting feeling, the psychological mismatch between the world as it is and the world as it seems to be. In a way, it’s even a cool feeling.

How many people feel the world shift like that? 🙂

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over fifteen years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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