Well, Iâm happy that you asked đ€
Iâm privileged with my brain, but it does require a lot of special attention.
As I mentioned in another comment here already, I think in experiences. This has many pros and cons.
One of the pros is that math comes easy to me because I can simply look at it and resolve it visually. While writing this I am seeing thin red lines tangling and detangling, because that is one representation of math to me.
When I close my eyes I immediately see a stream of morphing images, much like those diffuse ai videos. But it is fully immersive with sound and is also emotional. The past few years it has also turned haptic, which is a bit unsettling because I am worried about hurting myself with my physical pose. Iâve had a few times that I return and my legs are sleeping. When I say hapric I donât just mean the ability to touch stuff, I also mean the deep feeling of being physically there.
I can go on, but I donât want to make this too long. Here are some contras.
My brain simply refuses to do certain things, no matter how hard I want or need to do them. Itâs not due to a lack of discipline. Basically I have a symbiotic relationship with my subconsciousness, and I better not forget it.
It always needs new information and to experiment with new things. This has consequences. For instance I canât really hold a routine longer than that it is interesting. I can get up at 5 every day, go for a run, then get to work and earn money. But this will only last a maximum of a few months until my brain decides it is done with exploring it. After that all I can do is accept the verdict and come up with something new, even if I was rather enjoying the results, or needed it.
I canât really play games for very long. If I really really like a game I can play it for maybe two weeks. But for the life of me I canât understand how someone can play a game for thousands of hours. The flood of novelty changes into a trickle and itâs just not enough to keep old Bessie happy. And it kind of sucks because I can imagine it must be so chill to just have this one goto game for unwinding, and it must be nice to be able to be part of a clan and to know all the little ins and outs of a game world.
I was absolutely atrocious in school. My brain is just incapable of learning that a queen has to be written to this way and a bishop has to be written to that way in a letter. I can see that itâs easy. I can see that I need to learn it for my own good. But itâs just not in the cards, so I flunked over and over again. I cried so much, and I didnât realize that I wasnât entirely stupid until I was 26!
A few years ago I had art therapy. The therapist told us to do a test. It was a piece of paper with a grid of points on it, some of them connected with lines. We had to look at it for a short while. Then we had to turn it over. On the other side you had the same grid but without any of the lines, and she told us to fill it in with the same pattern, from memory.
Most people there would have failed the test if it would have been in an academic setting. A few were pretty decent. But I aced it and didnât miss a single thing. I cried so hard, because of all the trauma it brought up. It taught me that Iâm not a failure and I have my own abilities.
One last contra is that all words appear experientially to me. So for example trickle down economy looks/feels like someone peeing. And thereâs a user on here called maggot, and itâs disgusting to me because I keep seeing a maggot in trash, and I can sort of feel its soft scales and so on.
Love this! Iâm glad you were able to come to learn what worked best for you. There are levels of academia and standardized is not for everyone, so itâs great that you eventually did find your strengths!
Thanks. Coming to this realization has allowed me to leverage my strengths on the market and also in terms of output for what I care about myself.
I feel this applies to so many other people too, that they feel bad about themselves because of what they were taught, and just donât see how strong they really are in some areas.
For example a friend of mine has adhd and flunked everything. But when you are talking with her she can totally hyperfocus on you and absolutely be there. Sheâs a listener and a healer. She has thank you notes from people all over her apartment.
Sheâs also freakin poor and always struggling. I told her yesterday hey why donât you go into coaching? There is such a high demand for people like you, you donât have to be licensed, and I know youâd ace it.
