Blinding Flash of the Obvious

[ladysprite]

Newsflash:

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?

Comments

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

I can sympathize to a certain extent- I'm not into gaming, for the same reasons as you... I'm even lowering the priority of LARP in my life. Although my job is in the IT world, I'm not typical- it's just my job, I feel no impulse to hack or program or anything in my spare time.

The normal is a fictional construct. The important thing is that you are a wonderful and unique person.