Too Many Words vs. Finding Your True Nature.

The more ideas I have, and the more I work out the math in my own mind to find them feasible, the more I realize how much I've shut myself down in the years prior to 2018.  It's a little galling, but I know I didn't do all of it to myself. Also I realize how much I have always been exactly what I am.

This is not a post about casting blame. We're going to talk about discovery.

In 1975, I was ten years old. For the second time, my school had me evaluated (to see if something was wrong with me.) I met with a guidance counselor weekly and she gave me various tasks that didn't make sense, but I performed them well.

She typed my parents a letter that begins:

"The most apt phrase to describe our most delightful Debbie is that she 'bites off more than she can chew.' Although this really isn't the case." I love this line. But then she follows with "Deb could do the work if she'd like to but perhaps she gets more attention if she doesn't." The counselor determined that I had a lack of responsibility, that I was choosing to be obstinate - common diagnosis in 1975.

While I agree that responsibility is important, I don't think she really identified my problem. I'd like to argue that even then I needed someone to discuss whether there wasn't really a better solution. I guess that made me needy. I just wanted to understand. I'm still having the same need for clarification, at this very instant.

I don't compartmentalize very much* - I'm a compiler. I take in everything. Everything swims around in my brain looking for other data to join. It takes me longer than most people take to come up with an answer, but it also avails me of solutions that the fast-sorter is not going to find on the first try, or the second. Maybe you think this sounds like you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson just touched my heart with this speech. He explains the difference between knowing the answer and finding the answer. He gets me, even though I'm not what he's talking about.

My counselor meant well when she wrote that letter in 1975, but she was stuck on C-A-T thought pattern - linear - and wanted me to learn to conform. She wasn't wrong, really; had I been able to conform my life would have been easier. Easier is not the same as fulfilling. Back then I had big ideas, but a ten-year-old is just not taken seriously as a project manager or even a seer. Wise Magets are no longer valued in society the way they used to be.

I still bite off more than I can chew *within a set time-frame* but if you don't use a stop-watch I will continue to amaze  you.

It may take extra work for you to truly understand your role in society and how it pertains to your true self, but fully grok it. Take your time if needed -- it'll make some parts of your life easier. It's also good to continually seek a place where your personal skill set fits, and people who get you.  The path is often solitary, but worthwhile.

If you can follow instructions but also look for another answer, that will be the most pragmatic use of your energy. Listen, but don't blindly follow, because there isn't any real reward in that.

*at all, really 

Further Reading: 

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Learning This guy is a national treasure. 

Origin of the word Grok  - screw it. I just linked you to the google page. You'll find what you need to know here. 

Wise Maget - Dr. Timothy Jolyon Hughes  Medieval Germanic literature provides "textual evidence to support the notion of a motif in German medieval literature of a maiden, wise before her years in many of the major works of the time." I love folklore for what it share about and how it shapes a society's collective intellect.

DanFam™  is the Facebook group where the rabid fans of Dan Navarro convene. These are my people. I'll meet them all in person if it takes the rest of my life.  My friend H has Bird Culture. Find your tribe.