brain blarps

Blarp: A cross between a burp, a blurt and a - I don't know what. I just like the sound of it.

So. Onward...

First of all, as donated by friend G, at a dance the other night:

baby steps. It's ok to go slow, take your time, and - gasp! MAKE MISTAKES WHILE YOU LEARN HOW TO DO SOMETHING!

He didn't actually say all that - when I expressed concern about going 'too slow' in learning to use an unfamiliar technology, he simply gave me a big, encouraging grin and said, "Baby steps!"
Thanks, G! If only my parents had ever understood this basic cheerleading technique - sigh.

So, breaking the ensuing thoughts down into small bites to help unravel, untangle and overwrite the old thought-tapes that imprinted themselves in my infant cranium as a result of growing up with unsympathetic, unsupportive, clueless parents:

being allowed to go at your own speed

being allowed to MAKE MISTAKES!!!!!!!!
even if you’re really smart

not being punished for being really smart

smart people still make mistakes, and sometimes they make really big, really stupid mistakes. We’re still human, you know.*

being allowed to learn at your own pace (as distinguished from being allowed to learn at your own 'speed'- speed is the raw processing capacity for learning a *given* thing; 'pace' is when you're ready to move from one 'thing' to another, or possibly to the 'next', thing - these are all arbitrary symbolic assignments [?what word? almost said 'assignations' WRONG buffalo breath.] I mean, who gets to decide what's 'next', anyway? If Einstein had followed the 'tried and true' series of 'next' steps in life, he'd never have found his own path. So FUCK road maps, anyway. Get there however you want. Or better yet, stay home, don't go there AT ALL. Just go in your head, or something. Do something else ALTOGETHER, don't let 'them' fuck with you. The Joneseseses [or who-ever].)

(symbology SUCKS and feels REALLY REALLY LIMITING right now. I need to TALK and WAVE MY ARMS AROUND with some other REAL LIVE HUMAN BEAN who actually GETS it. NOW. Ahem.)

*I think my dad used to try to make me feel bad when I'd make mistakes because *he* often felt bad because of how smart I was - ok, let me try writing that again so it makes more sense.

So. My dad was really insecure, and didn't feel very smart a lot of the time.

Enter new baby girl, who at an unexpectedly early age shows great precociousness (yes, that would be the actual *definition* of 'precociousness', now, wouldn't it?)

So now dad feels even *more* insecure and self-conscious, because, dang it, here's this little *kid* who's constantly showing him up! And she doesn't even know it! And isn't even *trying* to make him feel bad - no, she manages to 'make him feel bad' by merely existing. This tiny, wee, brand-new baby girl stirs up such horrible feelings of insecurity in this young man that he feels compelled to (emotionally speaking) squash her like a bug. So that *he* can feel better, regain his manly sense of superiority. Or some such shit.

No, as the squashee, I *refuse* to have any sympathy for the squashER. I mean, come on - *I'm* the one who got to have my little innards splattered all over the pavement. Metaphorically speaking. Theoretically, there isn't even enough 'me' left to be capable of having sympathy for another being. Besides which, I'm the one we're having sympathy with, here. NOT him. Ok? Got it? Good.

***
Next thought-fragment:

being uninterrupted by the needs of others while you’re trying to learn how to do something

***
The thing that people from previous generations don’t understand, and even people only 10 years older, or sometimes only 5 or 6 years older, is that things are changing and have changed so fast that no one can keep up. It takes time, and energy, and focus to learn how to do all these new things, and still get all the *other* things done, as well. Especially when you have nobody to help you learn, nobody to CARE *if* you learn, or *what* you learn, let alone HOW you learn. Mostly they're just pestering you to GET ON WITH IT AND DON'T BOTHER ME WITH YOUR STUPID PROBLEMS.

So piss off, all y'all, while I figure out what the hell's WHAT here, and decide what *I* want to be doing with MY time, energy, and LIFE.

And THEN, *IF* I've got any time, energy, or LIFE *LEFT*, after all that, then MAYBE, if you're really really GOOD and NICE TO ME ALL THE TIME, I just MIGHT let you back in. To my life. MAYBE.
***

And just because our *technology* has leaped ahead at the speed of light in the last human years, doesn’t mean humans have ‘evolved’ to keep up. Yes, we’ve *adapted* to a certain degree, but our basic wiring, physiology, mental and emotional coping mechanisms haven’t changed. So there’s a massive cognitive dissonance, culture clash, etc. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be around when the results are in, when this asymptotic catastrophe curve gets close enough to ground zero to implode.

***
parents who expect you to do too much too fast because they are impatient, or you are too obviously smart (it took me a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to get that if you're FEMALE (ack!) you're not supposed to be smart. Or, you're not supposed to show it. Or, you're supposed to hem and haw all the time and pretend not to get it so as not to step on anybody's toesies or hurt their little ... blech. Feeling ill, now. Must stop.

I guess,to be honest? I STILL don't get it. And I DON'T WANT TO!!!!! What the fuck, why the HELL should I fucking HIDE one of my best ATTRIBUTES, for FUCK's SAKE????? Jesus H. CHRIST on a fucking toothpick. I just don't GET people. ever. At ALL.)

Continuing... They put this pressure on you to grow, like those hothouse plants that are force fed nutrients so that they’ll be showy enough to sell at some particular time and place.

And that’s another thing: Feeling like you’re a performing seal or a trick pony or something. They only want you around if you’re somehow a feather in THEIR cap – you have no intrinsic value of your own, as a person, as a human being. You’re only valuable to them if they can PROJECT something onto you: Their needs, fears, wants, unrealized hopes and dreams; or, if you’re a SERVANT, and DO WHAT THEY TELL YOU; or, if you somehow COVER THEM WITH GLORY, in the reflected limelight of your successes and achievements, which they try to take credit for, again, as if you were a performing seal and they taught you all your tricks, taught you everything you know.

Which we all know is total, utter, complete CRAP, and, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit.


***

I am making
a big mess

you know how you get these theories
and then you try them out

and sometimes they turn out to be totally wrong

but sometimes, they turn out to be totally RIGHT?

Well, this time, I think I’m on to something. I mean, I’m *often* on to something, because I’m just brilliant that way.

But – THIS time, I think I’m REALLY on to something.

Ok ok already, what is it then, madame le ultra-brilliance?

It is this: When I was little, I was not allowed to be messy (and somehow, my mother never made the connection between her obsession with cleanliness and my fear to make a mess and my hyper-organizedness, which, even she, when I was a little kid, admitted blew her away. Maybe being organized was actually *hard* for her [yes, I would say so, given her *current* lifestyle], so I totally flummoxed her with the apparent ease with which I, this tiny little kid, with no training or experience, could put things together? Wow.)

Anyway. So NOW, as an ‘adult’, I’m making up for it. In spades. Or something. As in, “It’s MY house, MY life, and I’ll make a great big mess in it IF I WANT TO.” And you can’t stop me. So neener neener.

In summary? Because I wasn't allowed to be a messy little kid, I have to be messy now. To make up for it.

***
More random thought bubbles from the same gassy patch of memory-swamp:

I think my parents resented how *easy* I made things seem, things that *they’d* always struggled with. (Actually, I think my dad was the one who really resented it - my mom's reactions seemed to be anywhere from a vaguely perplexed, "huh - should she really be able to do that at that age?" to a more opportunistic, "Hey, this could save me a *lot* of time!" The main problem with the latter response was that it seemed to label me as 'adult' long before I was anything *like* an adult [at least, in my mom's mind] - she used to say I was "Two going on twenty." Curses, foiled again.)

But what they forget is, I learned from THEM. From watching them. I learned quickly, and easily, and I had lots of examples, all the time, all around me, both of GOOD ways to things and BAD ways to do things. Did I say I learned quickly? And without being taught. The basic definition of high intelligence: One who learns by observing rather than being told how to do it.

The point being, I think, that i sort of wish I could go back in time to my too-young, clueless parents and say: "Hey, it's ok that she's really smart. It doesn't actually HURT you for her to be smart - in fact, in can be an advantage, right? And guess what, even though she's really smart, she still has to pick up what she's learning from somewhere, right? And guess who she's learning all this really cool stuff from? You two! That's right! You parental units have actually made a significant contribution to all this brilliance! Yay! You're not just loser slug-heads!"

Actually, I'm pretty sure mom never thought of herself this way (as a loser slug-head) - her defense mechanisms were too solidly in place for that. And my dad? I think he pretty much went to his grave doubting himself, though he learned how to hide it reasonably well by the time we (kids) would've been old enough to begin questioning him about it. Which was right about the time he died.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe dad would've felt better if he'd realized I wasn't just totally figuring all that stuff out out of thin air? That I actually gleaned it from somewhere, and hey, who else would I have learned it from if it wasn't him or mom? But maybe that wouldn't have made him feel better after all. I don't know.

And the truth is, by the time I was a little over three, I was already reading so fast and furiously that I think a lot of my ideas *were* coming from 'outside' sources.

Reading so much at an early age is the only way I can explain having such different notions from my parents, because I had very little interaction with others outside the family (maybe because we moved so much, my dad was gone a lot, and my mom was pretty anti-social between raising two young kids pretty much single-handedly and various other factors I can only guess at?)

There really weren't any other 'outside influences' to speak of until I went to school, I was something of a hermit between ages 3 and 5 while my mother cloistered me (unintentionally - I think she was trying to do the right thing, but simply didn't 'get' that a kid that young shouldn't be left alone so much) in her pseudo-'Montessori' space up in the attic that she made for me. I don't really remember that time - I have a flash image of a dark space with lots of 'stuff' for me to play with, and a screaming little brother downstairs taking all her attention. I'm pretty sure this is when I began my lifelong tendency to escape into books, and why I get absorbed in them so quickly and easily, and why I read so fast: They were my own personal equivalent of TV. All that was a coping skill rather than a talent, although it served me well in later years. Two-edged swords, once again.

***
part of it's being an energetic, talented, smart WOMAN in a world where GIRLS (blech) are expected to SIT AROUND BEING PRETTY and NON-THREATENING in case there are any MALES (note: I did *not* say 'men') in the vicinity to feel THREATENED by your superior mental fire-power and general all-around AWESOMENESS.

Note to all be-penised ones: I will not SMALLIFY myself any more. Yer on yer OWN.

FUCK this 'nurturing the yayhoos that get all the power in the first place'. FUCK that shit. And the dinosaur it rode in on.