I have always heard that women are better at multitasking than men. Which from my perspective up to now has always been true. It seemed any female could multitask better than I could. But now that I am transitioning things are changing, but not quite the way I was expecting.
My ability to manage multiple tasks at once hasn’t changed much yet. But my ability for my emotions to multitask is amazing.
It used to be when people would ask, “How are you doing?” and I could give a quick simple answer. Now quite a while ago I made up my mind to never give a routine answer. When people would ask such questions I would stop for a moment and think about it. Then I would give an honest answer, sad, happy, tired, cold, frustrated, upset, whatever I was feeling at the time.
But now when people ask how I’m doing I still stop but not to asses my feeling. I stop to decide which feeling to tell them about. My emotions often seem to be like a rainbow with so many nuances. It is like going to a delicious buffet with dozens of different treats and tasting them all at once.
So now I stop and think which emotion do I want to share with them and how many of the nuances of that emotion do I want to tell them about. What can make this process even more difficult is that some of these emotions don’t have names. At least I don’t have names for some of them.
Usually after a minute or so of pondering how to reply with the other person wondering what is wrong I either (A) just randomly pick one of my emotions so that I can say something and end the concern, (B) based on the situation pick whatever seems most appropriate, or (C) if I think they are up to it, explain how many emotions I have buzzing around inside of me at the moment.
Now I am not always an emotional smorgasbord. There are times, like right now, that I am calm and of one feeling. But when my emotions decide it is time for a feast, it is quite tasty and I enjoy every minute of it.
