All my life, I've felt like I can think faster than most people. It's not that I'm always right, but I'm fast. And for all this, I can't figure out why I can't figure out what to write about.
In school, I was a fast test taker. My classmates always assumed I knew all the answers, but that wasn't true at all. I simply knew what I knew and what I didn't know. This allowed me to power though fill-in-the-blanks and essay questions with confidence and methodology. I had read somewhere that if you need to guess, your first guess is more likely to be true than your second or third guess. So I left my guesses alone and went back after grading to see how well my guesses had done. It was always kind of fun, in an objective, forensic kind of way.
Another thing that helps me think quickly is being able to hold a significant number of variables and pieces together in my brain long enough for them to start showing me interrelationships. What is happening + how I know the world works + some hunches = some pretty insightful ideas, sometimes. I often conceive of ideas or information pieces as hued 3D shapes that start fitting together somehow. (You can see some evidence of this internal process if you watch my hands as I talk; they move and create shapes that are reflections of what I'm seeing in my head. It's odd, and I've been teased for it by loving colleagues over the years.)
I'm also able to really break things down to their most basic components. And again, this is in the realm of thinking. It's like taking apart a toy and putting it back together again, back and forth and back and forth in succession. The mental sensation is a little bit like going up and down a ladder. Once I'm confident I know what each piece does, I focus on the ones I want and discard the others.
I can also block out distractions, ruthlessly in fact. When I'm working from home and my family happens to arrive before I'm done, they know that expression on my face that means over 90% of my brain CPU is occupied. They'll get me back when the idea or task is played through.
All these things, all the workings of my beloved brain, are not helping me focus, sift through and strike out on a content path which I hope to lead me to my eventual dream job of writing and speaking for a living. I can talk about:
- Being Japanese-American in an era where Japanese aren't really coming from Japan to the U.S. anymore and when three historic Japantowns remain in the entire U.S. We're a dying breed.
- Theology of the heartbroken. After my first husband went atheist and then gay, I could talk about how awkward and painful it is for one to inch and crawl back to a community and life of faith.
- Straight Spouse, etc. Because I've worked my hiney off to keep myself and my family strong after my divorce with first (now gay) husband, I get occasional reachings out from people who have questions for themselves or for loved ones about a possibly gay partner.
I'm sure I could talk about a lot of other things.
What's with the little garden picture for this blog? Well - if it's so easy to cover seeds with some dirt, water them, protect them and watch them sprout into precious, tiny green things, where the heck are my great ideas to make the world a better place? This is an intentionally imperfect comparison. It's just that I feel like there have been seeds lurking in the soil of my brain for too long, and nothing has sprouted yet. When will these ideas start growing?!
