And mine is especially so.

I realized from a very young age that I was different from most around me. As a young boy I was supposed to be entranced by sports, but the opposite was the case for me. All the movies and TV of my youth were about being macho; I had massive levels of empathy instead. I tried my best to fit in where I was supposed to but that proved to be just too much to cope with. It would be years before I discovered that these traits made me the unique person I am.

I was instead a creative kid who just thought differently from those around me. My mind just didn’t run in straight lines, but instead it jumped. One thought brought on the fireworks of a dozen others. I tried to stay on topic but I soon discovered that this fragmented way of looking at the world was actually an asset. The fireworks of my brain showed me a level of creativity that few around me displayed.

My mind mostly sees things in images. Even before I went deaf almost 40 years ago my dreams were mostly images without words. I can still vividly remember the floorplans for all the houses I have lived in, all twenty of them.

The other side of this coin is that I am a wordsmith. WordPress, who hosts this blog tells me that I use a bigger variety of words than 97% of those who use their services. I just have to find the “right” words for the circumstances I and writing about.

Now in my 80th year of life some of the above is morphing into different patterns. Sometimes I get up to do something and by the time I stand up I forgot what I wanted to do. These kinds of things bug me but I am learning to accept that as normal, at least for me now.