Blinding Flash of the Obvious
Nov. 20th, 2008 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteNewsflash:
I'm not normal. Or average. Or typical. Or any of the other descriptors that one could use to suggest 'more or less like everyone else.'
I know. Big deal; odds are most of the people reading this fall into that category. Here's the thing, though - fandom, or geekdom, or whatever you want to call it, has its own normal, too. And I'm not that, either.
I'm not a computer person. Most of y'all are. You work with computers, or play with them, or at least know how to speak computer-ese. Me? I know how to turn my laptop off and on, and use the two or three programs that are most vital for day-to-day function.
My smarts lie more with living things than codes or machines. I like soft, squishy, moving things; I understand them more, I speak their language, they make sense to me. Even on a pure-science level, I've always understood molecular biology better than particle physics or electronics.
I'm not analytical. I don't think in problems-and-answers. Not even so much shades of gray as not even in black-white-gray-scale to begin with. I'd rather talk about things than just solve them. (ENFP, for those of you who speak Meyers-Briggs.)
I'm not any one of the Standard Fannish Body Shapes. I'm not big-and-beautiful-and-busty, and I'm not beanpole-skinny. I'm short, and I have no bosom worth speaking of, but I'm still more curvy than boney. I'm more cut out for hip-huggers and halters than corsets.
I don't like computer games. Or board games. Or card games, for that matter. I'm not so much a fan of the winner/loser dynamic that any of them stress. I like teamwork, and as far as I'm concerned, rules are just things that get in my way.
I'm different. Not in every way - I still read the same books, have the same hobbies, play most of the same games (mostly the ones that don't focus so much on winning and losing), have the same friends, beliefs, and all that.
I understand this now. The trick - the big one, that I still have to figure out - is learning how to look at those differences from another perspective. How to focus on them as things that I do have, rather than looking at everyone else's similarities as things that I don't have, and am inferior for not having.
Not better, not worse - not me and not the rest of the world, either. Just.... different.
Why is that so hard?
I'm not normal. Or average. Or typical. Or any of the other descriptors that one could use to suggest 'more or less like everyone else.'
I know. Big deal; odds are most of the people reading this fall into that category. Here's the thing, though - fandom, or geekdom, or whatever you want to call it, has its own normal, too. And I'm not that, either.
I'm not a computer person. Most of y'all are. You work with computers, or play with them, or at least know how to speak computer-ese. Me? I know how to turn my laptop off and on, and use the two or three programs that are most vital for day-to-day function.
My smarts lie more with living things than codes or machines. I like soft, squishy, moving things; I understand them more, I speak their language, they make sense to me. Even on a pure-science level, I've always understood molecular biology better than particle physics or electronics.
I'm not analytical. I don't think in problems-and-answers. Not even so much shades of gray as not even in black-white-gray-scale to begin with. I'd rather talk about things than just solve them. (ENFP, for those of you who speak Meyers-Briggs.)
I'm not any one of the Standard Fannish Body Shapes. I'm not big-and-beautiful-and-busty, and I'm not beanpole-skinny. I'm short, and I have no bosom worth speaking of, but I'm still more curvy than boney. I'm more cut out for hip-huggers and halters than corsets.
I don't like computer games. Or board games. Or card games, for that matter. I'm not so much a fan of the winner/loser dynamic that any of them stress. I like teamwork, and as far as I'm concerned, rules are just things that get in my way.
I'm different. Not in every way - I still read the same books, have the same hobbies, play most of the same games (mostly the ones that don't focus so much on winning and losing), have the same friends, beliefs, and all that.
I understand this now. The trick - the big one, that I still have to figure out - is learning how to look at those differences from another perspective. How to focus on them as things that I do have, rather than looking at everyone else's similarities as things that I don't have, and am inferior for not having.
Not better, not worse - not me and not the rest of the world, either. Just.... different.
Why is that so hard?
no subject
Date: 2008-11-20 11:43 pm (UTC)it's hard because we are conditioned, by parents or the word, or ourselves to compare ourselves to everyone else as metrics. to do that "am i like them? am i normal?" check, which in terms of for example realizing that having a green and shriveled up hand is NOT normal and maybe one aught to see a doctor, is a good thing. but it is not good in the less "out there" cases :)
there is a reason i poke at computers. i can't kill them. no matter how badly i fuck up at worst some data will be lost and some folks will be angry. back in HS i had a chat with my dad. as most jewish dads he wanted me to be a doctor. and i sat there for several hours and explained to him that i know for a fact that i do not have the mental fortitude to cut a living being, to have daily the very being and lives of things depend on me. computers are plastic and metal. i can do plastic and metal.
you are different. if you were jsut like me, talking would be unnescesary and boring. but you are different, you bring a different and unique to you perspective to every conversation. i don't have 8 hour chats with myself, but i have them with you.
normal is merely perpendicular to the plane. and i make the math geek-joke like that because i too compare myself to everyone. am i like them? am i normal? why is she skinnier then me, we had the same amount of cake. why can she stand up straight and i can't? why does she have a boyfriend and i don't what is wrong with me? so, we all make jokes to hide that we constantly find ourselves lacking. and to try to revel in teh difference, because it IS important, and needed, even if does cause us all to cry sometimes...