I have said a lot of things about people not being willing to teach me to do things so I can do them for myself before. And that point remains valid. I would much rather do things for myself than be a burden on others, and yet, people have repeatedly chosen to do it for me and leave me dependent rather than invest the time in teaching me to do it and save themselves from ever having to do it for me again.

That’s like deciding you would rather change your oil every day for the rest of your life than spend ten minutes going to the store and buying a filter.

But it occurs to me today that I was not the easiest person to teach things either. I’m still not. Partly that is because I have a somewhat panic-prone personality and a very high emotional valence.

For the most part, though, the problem is that my eyes don’t work right. They never have, as far as I can tell. It’s extremely hard for me to focus on small details and I get by in life via gathering information in short glances that get all the information they can before my vision blurs.

I assume I learned to do that at a very early age. But it makes it very hard to learn by watching someone do it, and when it comes to physical skills, that’s pretty much the main way of doing it. I don’t know how many times I have been in the situation where someone is saying “Just do this! *does thing* ” and I reply “But I don’t know how to do that. ” and they say “What do you mean? I just showed you how to do it!” and all I can say is “but I don’t know how to do that thing you just did!” and they get real mad at me.

The missing link, I suppose, is that watching someone do something does not convey the information to me. I am sure it must work great for most people. That’s more or less what our motor mirror neurons are for. But those rely on detailed visual information that I am just not getting.

To me, watching someone do something doesn’t teach me that thing any more than watching the Olympics teaches me how to win gold medals.

What I really need, I now realize, is an explanation. A method. Someone to explain to me what the idea is, what the problems are, and the best way to solve them. Nice, clear, verbal information that I can understand and apply. That might seem quite crazy if what we are talking about is mopping a floor or cleaning a mattress, but that is nevertheless the only way it going to work for me.

And even then…. my poor hand eye coordination and other issues might keep me from actually be able to do what I now know how to do.

I’m basically handicapped in a way I can’t even explain properly to a doctor or optometrist. Sigh.

That’s why all my skills are mental. As long as it can happen 90 percent in my head, I can do it. Like writing. I can do that! Because all I need to be able to do in the real world is type.

Analysis is perfect for me, whatever the subject, because it’s mostly thought. Analytical thought, which I realize is not in everyone’s wheelhouse but I seem to be a natural for it. It feels like it’s a natural extension of my tendency to think deeply about things, as well as the unusually efficient and effective relationship between my left and right brain.

Like I have said before, I can be thinking about something without it being in my consciousness at all. A subject can pass through my conscious mind into deep processing quite easily, and after that, my mind works on it in the background.

That’s both where my insights and the primordial cauldron of my creativity can be found. I feel like there must be another ingredient, though, because everyone has an unconscious mind but not everyone gets the sort of use out of it I do. Maybe it has to do with a particular kind of intelligence that can subconsciously perform a lot of the sort of basic functions of logical deduction that we normally associate with conscious thought, like deduction and causal chains and anomaly detection, on such a deep level that it doesn’t require any conscious thought at all.

That’s certainly how it seems to me, subjectively.

Especially with creative problem solving. It’s like the two halves of the problem, namely where we are and where we are trying to go, exist as physical objects in my mind, and all I have to do is imagine a line connecting the two.

Obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but that’s how it seems to me.

I’ve been watching an anime series about classical music students called Your Lie In April. It really makes that whole world seem like hell.

Not on purpose, of course, and not for everyone. But for me, it seems like a nightmare. All the pressure, the inhuman drive required, the locking kids into this airless, cruel, and violently anti-creative environment, the emphasis on precision over artistic inspiration…. everything about it is toxic to me.

My History of Popular Music prof told us that the music faculty at KPU is locked in energetic discussion over the issue of whether or not the whole conservatory system is worth it, considering what it does to kids and how sterile its aims have become.

If the goal really is precision, then I’d say it’s about bloody time. To me, trying to turn kids into the human equivalent of a player piano is worse than futile, it’s inhuman. And I worry very much about how little the kids themselves have to say about it, and how easily it becomes more about their parents’ ambition and desire for bragging rights over other parents instead of being anything at all about the kids themselves and what is good for them.

I am sure there are kids who love it, and it’s good, then, that it is there for them.

But for others…. it’s got to be a living hell.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.