Friday, September 4, 2020

Balance Brain



Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 6 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 


My “Secret Subject” is: Do you feel as though you’re more right brained? Or left brained?
It was submitted by: https://Bakinginatornado.com

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 Both? Neither? I dont feel like either aspect of my thinking and skillsets are dominant. 


And I'm not just saying that because every quiz I've ever taken has said I use both equally but... ok it might have a little to do with it. 😉


Ive been learning to draw for the first time in my life, and I've actually gotten pretty decent at it. I didn't think that was a creative skill I could tap into, but I've kinda proven myself wrong on that. I won't be drawing any realistic nudes any time soon, but I'm proud of where I'm headed. I write. A lot. Imaginative and dark fiction and personal essays expressing emotions I need to put out in the world that would otherwise fester inside my body eating away at any peace I have. I craft things. I've spent the last year and a half designing my own enamel pins and then creating funny cosplays with my cat to advertise for my shop. I've taught myself to sew by hand and machine. I love painting cardboard houses for my cats. I've upcycled clothes... The list for the things I can create is pretty long. I love that side of myself. 


But I'm also good with math. I always have been even when I hated the subject, and for the last 7 years of homeschooling my son, I've been able to teach him fractions and decimals and graphing and algebra and geometry without really having to relearn much. I get a satisfaction from factoring polynomials that I can't even begin to put into words without sounding like an absolute nerd. I enjoy listening to true crime cases and methodically putting together the pieces of a puzzle and decide on a theory of events. When I am overwhelmed with emotions about something in the news, I turn to facts. Recently when Kyle Rittenhouse opened fire on protesters in Kenosha while I watched on a live stream, I spent the next few days putting together timelines and looking up laws of that state. The act of analyzing the events with facts instead of just focusing on the traumatic scenes that will forever be etched in my brain is the only thing that has allowed me to stay relatively calm and get some sleep.


I don't think either side of my personality wins out. I don't reach to logic and facts more than emotions or imagination. I spend as much of my waking time going through the motions while daydreaming as I do going through the motions listening to podcasts about current events, sociopolitical issues, history, and murder. I'm always learning both facts and how to make something. I come up with recipes by experimenting in the kitchen which is a little creativity and a little analytic understanding of ratios and flavor combinations. 


Balance, I guess. And that's important for me. When you're discussing social issues, the emotions and the empathy and the reimagining of solutions is just as important as the facts and logic, and that's an area that I have remained focused on for much of my adulthood. Theory and praxis. Reinventing from what has been and what is to a better tomorrow. There's no "make America. Great again" or "build back better." None of us should be happy with going backwards, and every step we take in that direction brings us closer to total fascism. Whether you're more like me or more right brained or more left, everyone has a role in moving forward, moving to a normal that is good for everyone not just a few. 

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Baking In A Tornado  https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2020/09/ruby-slippers-and-rose-colored-wishes.htm

4 comments:

  1. I think you're one of few people who have that level of balance. I sure wish I did.

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  2. I used to be a lot better at Math before the accident. Now, I have trouble keeping my checking account balanced. I am happiest coding and building websites. I always wanted to draw or paint and was never able to so this is how I can create. It makes me happy.

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  3. I am definitely much more right than left. I can't math...like, I have trouble with my son's 4th grade math kind of can't math. But I'll write all day.

    ReplyDelete