When someone is sick or has a disease, I research it. I learn everything I can about it. I become an near-expert about it to fully understand it. When I was pregnant, I read seven 300+ page books about giving birth. When I was sick, I read everything I could about autoimmune diseases. It is compulsive. I can't stop myself. It's like there is a secret in there that I can unlock, but that's only if I learn as much as I can about it. I know that isn't actually true, but it happens every time I become obsessed with a particular subject. The internet is so amazing, but it also overwhelms me because the possibilities are infinite. The information is endless and from so many points of view. It's both beautiful and entrancing. Once I start down the rabbit-hole, it becomes hard to stop.
Recently, that obsessive topic has been about giftedness. I've read blogs, books, forums, studies, you name it. It has become a hobby to research it because I want to know more about people like my son. Surprisingly, I've discovered much more about my own self in the process. I now realize now that I was a gifted child. I was never tested, but I was invited to do a talent search. It was very obvious looking back now knowing the signs of it.
It explains so many things about how I acted and how I had odd quirks. I didn't fit in. I read encyclopedias for fun. I won and participated in a ton of academic contests. I was always at the top of my class and yet never found a challenge no matter how hard the teachers tried. I probably should've skipped a grade, but my parents were content with me being a good student. Well, at least until junior high, then I just stopped caring and rebelled – just like many gifted girls do.
As an adult, I now understand why I dislike having to explain myself and why it's hard for me to work backwards when I can envision how things work together as an entire system without going through a defined process. I can sit down with a set of objectives and limited data and figure out ways to get from Point A to Point B in a matter of hours. I am blessed to be able to wrap my head around complex systems easily and that is my day job. It's a fun challenge for me to organize the flow of data.
That works well when I don't have a team of people to be accountable to, but pretty hard for people to understand that explaining the process to get to the solution is backwards for me. It's not that I can't, it's just that I prefer not to waste my time to do if the solution has been already been figured out. Am I always right? Nope, but I know how to improvise. I like to create the big picture and then refine it with detailed answers. Hence, I like working for myself. My clients don't care about the process in detail, they care about the solution. I wonder how or where I would fit in a team if I had to. I am more and more a rarity in my field because I understand the whole
convoluted production process instead of specializing in a single step
of that process.
I discovered all of this about myself while reading about different types of giftedness. This particular one seems to be visual-spatial, and my expertise is organizing data. I just think it is really nice to finally understand myself a little better.
