The downsides of familiarity

Normally, it’s a wonderful thing. You can immediately jump in to a conversation with friends and those you spend time with because you know them. You can do something in a game or a computer program because you’re used to it. You can handle your car better than most other people simply because you’re used to the nuances of driving it.

Now take that familiarity away. The whole game changes.

Take someone who has been driving a stick shift all their lives, and the first time or two they drive a new manual transmission vehicle, the results are ugly. Stalls, shaky starts, sudden whiplash inducing gear changes…all because they need time to find that ‘sweet spot’ in the clutch.

Everyone has showed up late to some sort of social event, and stood in the doorway a little awestruck and intimidated by the fact that they recognize maybe 5% of the people in the room. You weren’t there for the gradual trickle in of people, so you weren’t gradually introduced to them. No no, it’s the full monty for you (hopefully without naked junk in your face…unless it’s that kind of party). You’re thrown in to a situation of ultimate discomfort.

This has long been a weakness of mine. It’s not that I go completely in to my shell and never really emerge, it’s more that it takes me awhile to get comfortable with people. Part of it is the fact that I’m A LITTLE outspoken. I tend to hold off a bit on unleashing the full Cliffy experience until I’m sure that’s going to work out okay. Sure, I pretty much have no qualms about saying anything anywhere anytime…but I also don’t want to create some horribly awkward social confrontation when I’m a guest at somebody else’s house (see? I’m not a complete jerk). So I take my time to sort of do a little subtle recon of the people, figure out who I have something in common with, and go from there.

Beyond that, it’s astounding how easy it is to become used to how a certain thing works. I got a reminder about that yesterday.

I’ve been having issues with Firefox for awhile now. Random crash problems that didn’t seem to be linked to an installed plugin. Newer versions didn’t help. Finally yesterday, the Google search bar actually stopped functioning. I could enter in a search item, and suggested searches would pop up underneath, but when I pressed Enter it just sort of sat there gazing at me. Literally nothing occurred, beyond a pop up about script errors. So yeah, a web browser with a broken search function…that’s about as useful as Lindsay Lohan as a sober living counsellor. Sure, I could try re-installing, but fuck it. I’m fickle when it comes to software and apps.

So I made the big switch to Chrome (and then Chromium). My thoughts went as follows :

“Wow, this thing really is fast!”

“Um…where the Hell is everything?”

I was completely lost on my own computer. No clue where anything was, or where to even find it. Slowly, gradually I started figuring it out. Wait…EVERYTHING is accessed by typing it in? Okay. A few extensions later, I had the major stuff nailed down…my Delicious bookmarks integrated, A Google Services setup, and something to let save a web page to Read Later. Good. Okay, a bit of comfort is setting in now.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t be afraid to try new things. Hell, doing so BEFORE you have to is probably a good idea to avoid feeling like you’re drowning in the unfamiliar when the inevitable need for an alternative arises.

And in the bigger picture view, getting out of the comfort zone every once in awhile is a good thing…if you don’t, you aren’t experiencing anything new. It doesn’t require a massive shift in your lifestyle…try a new book, a new kind of music, a movie beyond the usual “Pew pew blow shit up!” kind of thing, whatever. Just stretch out your horizons every now and then. Sure, the results will sometimes suck, but it’s probably worth rolling the dice now and again.