Last week I spent about an hour working up a spreadsheet to calculate some obscure price vs benefit analysis for a product I buy. Their pricing structure was technically broken, I realized—at least, the way they explained it. I waded gleefully through numbers and equations and dollar signs and came up with a much better attack for them—much simpler for their clients. Of course no one asked me to do it, but when Megan gets something in her head…

Marty looked on in fascination, as I proudly displayed my beautiful spreadsheet—and explained the results. “You should really go back to playing D&D,” he told me. “That’s exactly what makes someone a great D&D player, doing stuff like that.”

I responded by default: “But I don’t like it!” And then I corrected, and explained the following: I like D&D a lot. I like the story part. I like that math part. It’s only when they are put together that I’m not crazy about them.

Thus began a bizarre revelation.

A few months ago in the process of developing one of my many cashflow models, I got in the habit of writing financial stories for Marty and I. They would start in the present and go on for the next several weeks, detailing how much money we had in our accounts now, what invoices I expected to be paid soon, what projects I could pull in to pay bills that would be due later on. I covered alternate scenarios and Plan Bs (and Cs and Ds) and the result was just like a mathematical word problem—but backwards. It was a mathematical word solution.

I loved doing this. I did it for a long time and although it was time consuming, it allowed me to think very clearly and concretely about my finances, which have always seemed a little too complicated for me. (I have a better system now, but at the time, this was quite slick and really doing the job it was meant to do!) In this particular case, Math + English = Fabulousness. There is no doubt in my mind that my thought process functioned particularly smoothly in this way, and still does.

Now, I quit playing D&D because although I loved the math, and I loved the stories… I didn’t like parsing them together. And when I was in school—get this—I hated word problems in math class. I always had trouble wrapping my head around all but the simplest ones, and I could never figure out why they were so hard. I’m a reading-and-writing wiz, and I love algebra, but I can’t do word problems? Argh!

I made my peace with it, of course, but thinking back on it now there is a very strange set of facts. The resulting realization here is that I love words, and I love maths, and I love writing about math (when it suits my purpose). But for some reason I dislike and cannot stomach reading someone else’s writing about math. For some reason, it’s tedious for me to interpret or convert in my head. It’s difficult to parse. I get turned around, somehow. And so, I don’t like it. This is why I don’t play D&D anymore (though maybe I should write it, ha ha).

This blew my mind. What could it mean? In another life, I will be a brain scientist. Surely it’s significant in some way that I love to create words+maths but dislike taking them in. One tiny Math-English Receptor Wrinkle in my brain says, No way, no how! MUTINY!

I’m okay with it, and all. But isn’t it awesomely cool to wonder about?

I started Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers recently. I read it out of the book sometimes, and listen to the audiobook sometimes, like I did with Made to Stick. It’s pretty leisurely as absorption goes, but it’s enjoyable. Plenty of spaces between lines to think a little.

So I’ve been thinking.

Since I’m still early on in the book, I’ve been musing a lot about school. I was crap in school. I didn’t fail things (much) but I generally managed grades just good enough to scrape by. “Good grades” was not a worthy adversary.

Before college, I wrote stories and drew pictures. A new friend in middle school had introduced me to the idea of making comic books, and I was down with that. I could create whatever I wanted. They never saw the light of day, but they were my primary pursuit. The only really interesting thing around!

In college, I started to become aware that my family had money problems, and they started to affect me more dramatically than they’d used to—anyway, that’s what the memory feels like. I knew more about them in college, and I was more aware of a particularly cogent, familial financial climate. I can’t remember what I was driven by when I started learning about the internet and thinking about “running a business”. I could tell you that it was about bringing in more money for the family unit (that is what it turned into), but I don’t know how it started. I just don’t remember.

I think it was that I noticed something that felt worthy of doing. So I did it.

I don’t know where Gladwell is going with this book, but I know it’s making me wonder about myself. I can feel those tiny impulses—you have them, too—every moment I scan a sentence or parse a spoken phrase. These are impulses to find in the outside world proof that I am relevant.

Something that tells me for sure that I’m good enough.

My IQ is high. At least, it was when I was little—in the last fifteen years I’ve a) had a strange sensation that suggests it’s oozing downward along my spine and b) discovered that IQ truly doesn’t matter as much as I was originally taught. I know that I’m creative, and I clearly can do really nifty things. (Otherwise, I’m not sure how I’ve gone this long without a “job”. It’s been at least five years, technically... How have I been paying the rent, again?)

But I’m still looking for validation. I know we all are. I’m looking for a sign from the universe that I’m doing the Right Thing. That the path I want can really be reached from the path I’m on. And so the strange uneasy feeling engendered by the first few chapters of Gladwell’s book, I think, is a result of me wanting him to say what I want to hear.

You know. As if he might know!

I have a lot of things that are supposed to mean something. The IQ thing. Test scores, percentiles. Taught myself to read, ostensibly. Whatever else. But none of this really means anything. The sheer non-issue of my mediocre grades in school should prove that. I feel good about hearing that none of it really means anything past a certain point. I am down with that. But if he’s going to say that those things don’t count, what does?

And is it going to be something I can get my hands on?

Have you ever had this feeling?

Wednesday night at Body Choir I had some pretty fascinating trains of thought.

For instance, I tend to repeat a lot of the same motions with my hands, or turn in the same direction (mostly left) when I’m dancing. Furthermore, I often make the same motions with my hands while turning in the same direction—something in my brain is predisposed towards that combination, for some very interesting but unknown reasons.

I wonder if anyone’s ever done a study on free form dance patterns—especially of people without any organized dance experience—and the relation of certain movements to certain ways of thinking, predispositions, personalities?

What do my dance patterns say about me?

Shiva Nata greatly affects the brain’s ability to build new pathways, make new connections. Obviously movement has to do with mental process. Even better—what if I work to change my dance patterns, become a “better dancer”? The better I am at my Shiva Nata practice, the better I am able to think. If I change the patterns of my free form dance, do I also change my way of thinking? My predispositions? My personality?

If I make a point of turning to the right (instead of the left) or of dancing in a clompy tribal fashion instead of a flowy belly-dancer fashion, what happens to my brain when I do it? Sure, I get better at dance—that’s about my brain. But what happens to everything else my brain does, after that point?

Thoughts? Resources?

My first speech at Toastmasters (I know, took me long enough!) is scheduled for Monday morning, bright and early. I’m serious when I say bright and early. The meeting itself starts at 6:45 am, which forces me to make good on my 5:15 am wake-up blabber. Nice to have the universe looking out for me. (I’m not sure that’s sarcasm. I rather like Toastmasters!)

I’ve noticed that I have a strange propensity to spout off about my personal terror without actually feeling a whole lot of personal terror. There is some mild anxiety—will I disappoint myself? Will I amaze myself?—but I’m not nearly as worried or afraid as you might expect when I say things like this: “Oh my god, I haven’t touched my speech yet. I’m teeerrrified.” If the words don’t convey it, my tone of voice will. And then people start to comfort and reassure me, and a voice in my head goes, “What? You’re not that scared. In fact, I think you’re making yourself that scared by telling yourself you’re that scared. Stop that!!”

The funny thing is, that voice is completely right. I’m really not that scared. Part of me can’t even grasp being that scared about something so little and silly (and exciting and interesting and growth-inducing—and FUN!). And I think I may understand what’s going on. I’m terrified… out of habit.

I have a funny propensity to minimize myself. To ensmallenate myself. I have this funny idea (way back in the brainwashed, badly malprogrammed part of my brain) that it’s safer, better, and more loveable to be small, weak, and afraid.

Yeah, I know.

So apparently that part of my brain—the unembigginated part—aligns very happily with the idea of being terrified, just shakin’ in my boots, at the thought of speaking in front of people.

Okay, ensmallebrain. Let’s sit down for a minute and talk.

I am super grateful for your kind intentions. I know you are just doing what you think is best. I know you’re only trying to help me! I know that you’ve noticed how easy it is to get people to behave in loving, comforting, downright parental ways if I’m small, weak, and afraid. I can totally appreciate that and I even understand it. But you need to know—just for the purposes of being informed—that I don’t need to be ensmallenated in order to have people love me. I know, I know, I totally know: I used to be under that impression, and I gave you that crazy idea in the first place so of course it’s NO WONDER! that you have made the decisions you have over the last twenty-seven and a half years. But I have more clarity now, and I know a lot better what makes people love me. And it would make me really happy—insanely, marvelously happy—if from now on you could base your decisions on this new information. That people love me just because I’m me, and I’m strong, and brilliant, and unique, and clever. I would like that super much.

No, no—DUDE! We are totally cool. It’s just that one thing.

Yes. Thank you for being SO understanding!

(See? No freakin’ problem!)

If I could only ask you to do one thing for me, for a span of about twenty minutes, all week, all month, I would ask you to please watch this video. It’s possible that this feels so profound to me because of material and ideas I’ve already begun to process, but I just can’t pass up the possibility that you might feel the same. So if you feel like trusting me for a small chunk of your time, this one, this one right here is what I’d choose for you.

Sunday afternoon I tagged along to BookPeople with Vixen to hear David Linden talk about his book, The Accidental Mind.

I hadn’t heard of it before, but having already delved into Stumbling on Happiness (Daniel Gilbert), I was instantly curious. I might truthfully have a meta-brain, which wonders about itself; if this is the case, I’m not in bad company.

You won’t be surprised that in discovering his blog, my interest in Mr. Linden was increased. He even made an entry about the Electronic Orifice Orchestra, part of Arse Elekronika’s sex & tech offerings earlier this month in San Francisco (something else I have a mad interest in). It’s odd and wonderful that in the blogosphere I can often see clearly if a writer’s attentions intersect with my own. He also made the following post in September:

The Elevator in my Shanghai Hotel…

...has a sign which announces the following (as an ad for their spa).

“Foot soaking in Springtime will strengthen Yang and reinforce vital energy. In Summer, it will dispel disease caused by heat and dampness. In Autumn, it will lubricate the intestines and in Winter, it will warm the pubic region.”

Well, I’m sold. Dude, sign me up.

David Linden, I think we can be friends.

And so it was that on a sunny day in mid-October I went downtown to Texas’ most esteemed book-selling establishment to sit in a surprisingly comfortable folding chair, scribbling notes and listening intently to the musings of a man that reminded me strangely of Pittsburgh and Todd McCaffrey, for different reasons. He had a regional accent that I couldn’t quite identify, and he was decidedly charismatic as a speaker (at least from where I was sitting).

I took a veritable deluge of notes; when we arrived he was just launching into an explanation of the brain as accidentally functional, rather than expertly designed. We covered structural qualities, experiential development, and the sexual behaviors of animals as compared to their human counterparts. (I told you it was good.) This part of the discussion was particularly interesting, though we eventually found our way on to other topics.

“It’s not just porn,” he explained—“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

As animals that can think about themselves thinking (that’s us), we sure do have a complicated system to consider. There are so many details, and scientists have probably begun to understand only a small fraction of them. That said, Mr. Linden seems to be pretty sure of his ideas, and he communicates them well. As creatures whose brain development depends on experience (the reason our childhoods take up such a large portion of our entire life spans as compared to other creatures, as I understand it), it’s very interesting that we are built to create narrative. Our telling of stories is more important than we may realize—even if most of our details are, well, edits.

A lot of Linden’s discussion had nifty hooks into the material I read in Stumbling on Happiness and I can’t help but wonder if the two books might not turn out to be complementary. That said… I still need to finish the Gilbert book, at least before jumping into the next! But it’s on my list, and it looks like it will be quite interesting—especially if the fabulousness of the author is any indication.

I’ve been using Lumosity games to exercise my brain this week. Has anyone else taken a look at this? I love it so far! It feels incredibly useful to my work day. All the testimonials that talk about increased focus and productivity are right on the money, as far as I’m concerned.

From the information they provide on the site:

The Lumosity brain fitness program is the result of synthesizing and building upon the cumulative work of neuroscience, psychology and cognitive science researchers worldwide. Their research forms the basis for creating the most effective exercises in each cognitive domain:

Memory
Memory exercises target the types of memory that are important in everyday life such as working memory, spatial memory, and remembering names and faces.

Attention
Concentrating on relevant information while ignoring irrelevant information is improved by exercising visual attention, selective attention, and shifting focus.

Processing Speed
Quickly perceiving, interpreting, and responding to new information underlies proficiency in many areas.

Cognitive Control
Control of other cognitive processes is necessary for thinking and acting according to internal goals.

And if you’re curious… here are my scores so far:

Speed Match (Processing Speed) 2760
Raindrops (Processing Speed) 487 – basic math! curses!
Birdwatching (Attention) 4504 – improving
Spatial Speed Match (Processing Speed) 2750 – improving

I haven’t quite figured out what it all means yet. The difference in my brain functioning is so obvious I don’t really care just yet. I hope they continue to develop, and I’m not even half-way through what they’ve got now!