A lot of the things David describes in this post resonate with me.
As far as I’ve been able to figure out so far, the things my mind is best at are details and systems. It‘s part of what makes me a good programmer: I can hold a lot of detail in my head about how a system fits together, I can mess around with it more easily than most people, and I can pick up on details other people might miss, such as potential bugs. A lot of the things I enjoy (and seem to be pretty good at) are those where there’s an underlying system to figure out and master – computer games, martial arts, even cooking.
Then there’s a few things my mind struggles to handle. Most of them revolve around people.
I’m not always great at figuring out what someone else is thinking, or feeling, or even dropping hints about. I can take educated guesses, for sure, but I don’t necessarily get it right. It also takes a lot of work to keep track of all the social cues going on whenever there’s a conversation happening, and all the social conventions most people seem to follow without even thinking. I can think of several times when someone has asked me how my weekend went, and it’s completely slipped my mind that the appropriate response is to ask them about theirs too. It’s not that I don’t care; it’s that I’m having to concentrate so much on the rest of the social cues that I take longer to catch up with how the conversation is supposed to go.
It took some balls to write his next one: My brain, and how you can help me. Respect.