I spent approximately five minutes trying to tear the wrong section off, mangling the box and cutting my finger twice in the process. This was an astonishing failure to solve a basic physical task.

I have a tendency to do this if I want to solve a basic task and someone is watching me, especially a teacher. (I'm in nursing school, so a lot of my evaluations consist of my teacher watching me assemble equipment, not something I'm talented with to begin with.) Alone, I'll just start experimenting with different ways until I find one that works, but if I'm being watched and implicitly evaluated, paradoxically enough I'll keep trying the same failed way over again until they correct me. I don't know if this is a weird illogical attempt to avoid embarrassment, or if I'm subconsciously trying to hasten the moment that they'll just go ahead and tell me, or if it's just because enough of my brain is taken up worrying about someone watching me that the leftovers aren't capable of thinking about the task, and just default to random physical actions.

I lost count of the number of consecutive cups of flour I was pouring into the bowl; I failed to count to four and a half.

I do this all the time, too. Maybe because my default state, when I'm alone and not under pressure to do something, is a kind of relaxed spacey-ness where I let my thoughts go on whatever association trains they please. People make fun of me for this, and it is irritating, but it's something I'm slowly learning to "switch off" when I really, really have to be focusing my whole attention on something.

I suddenly began to believe that matching colored gems was the process by which one constructed sound arguments. In general. This sensation lasted approximately five seconds before reality reasserted itself.

This kind of thinking happens to me all the time in the state between sleeping and waking, or during dreams themselves. It's occasionally happened to me while awake. I don't find it particularly concerning, since it's easy to notice and wears off fast.