I keep a minimalist head; I store all my baggage in my subconscious.

[feldman]

I've been working on the following concepts this year, which range from sneaking suspicions to epiphanies. In Douglas Adams' "Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul", these would be the boxes packed away in the subconscious that, very very rarely, one has the opportunity to unpack.

Mine are not full of penguins.

~*~ Just because someone is a narcissistic bully does not mean a damned thing on my end. This has involved some pretty intensive moments of not reacting in the moment, then vivisecting the fuck out of the big red candy-like buttons said bully had been punching on my personality. In other words things are much calmer at work, even though the job itself is underemployment to a comic degree.

~*~ People react very differently now that my work-personality flavor has switched from "terrified of being fired" to "indifferent competence". Confidence keeps out the riff-raff, apparently.

~*~ When I'm on campus I'm so damned content that random strangers have struck up conversations with me, as one lady said while we waited for the walk signal, "You just look so happy." Strangers, small talk, smiles; the last three things I'd ever suspect to coincide.

~*~ Elementary school laid several head trips on me that I'm only now seeing as lies. It's now sunk in that smart /= effortless learning, and I've gotten the hang of persistent effort in the last few years. The most recent realization is still so new as to be a bizarre hypothesis: I'm not really lazy. Mr. F tells me he's never understood that belief of mine, where it could even come from, but in school I was always "irresponsible, a procrastinator and unwilling to do the work". I was also reading my mom's scifi and college textbooks in fourth grade, daydreaming when I wasn't outright reading (for pleasure) in class, and have always had problems with meaningless work. Add in the seasonal depression right after the teens and 'laziness' feels true. But I begin to think it never really was true.

~*~ I am not entirely neurotypical. I need to stop thinking that if I just tried harder and was tougher and more disciplined I could finally achieve normalcy. These little things that make me comfortable are not barriers I need to get over, they're tools like taking extra oxygen up a mountainside. The big flaming sign on this one was that my dad quit smoking and in short order took up one said comforting habit big time. Self-care by way of harmless oddity=good. Yeah, so not fighting that battle anymore.

~*~ My next area of concentration is to embrace the shitty first draft. The latest development of this is to write the sparkly thing right away and then worry about how the story gets there, instead of worrying about context and never getting that inspiring image solidly down.

Comments

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

~*~ I am not entirely neurotypical. I need to stop thinking that if I just tried harder and was tougher and more disciplined I could finally achieve normalcy. These little things that make me comfortable are not barriers I need to get over, they're tools like taking extra oxygen up a mountainside.

Yes. This. Thanks for articulating.

[sabaceanbabe.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're back. I've missed reading these posts. :)

[kerlin.livejournal.com]

Elementary school laid several head trips on me that I'm only now seeing as lies. It's now sunk in that smart /= effortless learning, and I've gotten the hang of persistent effort in the last few years.

I'm still getting the hang of that one myself, only with the constant terror that because, typically, I am an easier learner, and have had to learn how to learn in grad school, I am therefore not smart. It's a work in progress.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

See, this is where it gets tricky--smarts are like speed and cross-wiring. They help a great deal, they make many things nearly effortless to learn and so we don't get to see what learning really feels like when it's slowed down and comes at us piecemeal. Spend a few decades like this and when you finally come across something that requires effort and takes time, it feels like your brain is failing you, like you've hit the wall of possibility.

It's really that for the first time since you got the hang of walking you get to revisit the learning space of piecing something together in slow-mo. It's not that you've reached a level of incompetence, it's that you've finally reached a level that requires you to stretch and gain strength.

It gets a little easier, but I still have a reflexive resistance to things I don't get right off the bat. I have to keep reminding myself it's like weightlifting or practicing compassion, if it's easy it's not accomplishing anything--when it's heavy, that's when real progress is made.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome.

I'm coming around to the idea that the immense effort to articulate some of the amorphous dread sloshing about at the bottom of my brainpan is worth it, considering how ridiculous some of these things sound when I put them into words. I used to think that verbalizing them would make them even more true, but I'm finding it's often the opposite.

Luckily, Mr. F is not the gloating type, even when he's been right all along.

[veritykindle.livejournal.com]

Elementary school laid several head trips on me that I'm only now seeing as lies. It's now sunk in that smart /= effortless learning, and I've gotten the hang of persistent effort in the last few years.

I found an interesting article (http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/) recently about how telling smart children that they are smart if they finish an assignment easily (rather than complimenting on their effort) actually makes them work less in future assignments, because they start connecting being smart with being able to finish assignments easily, so they start feeling like they are not smart enough if they need to actually work at an assignment. I found that very interesting, because I never really thought of it that way, but I think it really makes sense.

I certainly still get that sense myself that there must be something wrong with me if I don't finish an assignment easily, even though I know better! It's really difficult to get rid of that feeling, isn't it. The assignments you really have to work at are the ones you will remember in the long-term, and as you said, they are the ones that will stretch your mind. But it's hard to remember that, when you are in the process of trying to get something that is just not clicking for you, and it's like hitting your head on a brick wall, *sigh*. (Yeah. I recently started taking graduate-level classes, too. *g*)

*hugs you* I'm glad to see you posting again! ♥

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

I've been reading about this as well; it's helped a great deal to help me examine and change these assumptions myself.

How come we've been hearing about gifted children for decades now and we have almost no conversations about these kids once they grow up?

Grad level is a sweet & savory kick in the head, ain't it?