I’m a walking right brain, left brain, contradiction.

A couple nights ago, hubs commented that he’d never met anyone else, beside a certain friend, who was equally left and right brained. My reaction: Say what? I am! Which resulted in the following conversation:

Nu-uh!

Uh-huh!

Nu-uh!

Uh-huh!

Yeah, we’re mature that way. Of course, the only logical solution was to take a quiz the next day to see who was right. 😉 Lo and behold, guess who scored exactly half and half?

1. I process things linearly but my brain is like a pinball machine in general. I.e. it bounces from thought to thought frequently. But while processing information, learning something new, etc, I have to go from point A to B to C etc. I can’t bounce and skip.
2. Because of #1, I process things from the parts to the whole. if I’m telling a story or giving instructions, I start at the beginning and work my way to the end including basically every point along the way. I’m learning to leave some points out so that I’m not so long-winded. Still working on that. 😉
3. Because of #1 and #2, if I get interrupted while telling a story or giving instructions, I usually default to starting back over at the beginning. It annoys even me. I’m getting better about just continuing at where I got interrupted.
4. I deeply crave order yet lack the discipline to carry it out.
5. Growing up my room was what I called “organized chaos” but my locker at school was tidy.
6. When I worked before kids, my house was messy but my desk was T.I.D.Y. to the T. I got frustrated when people moved stuff out of it’s place.
7. Not to brag but I have GREAT organizational skills. I have lousy cleaning habits.
8. I have a slightly disturbing love for office supplies: post-it notes, pens, highlighters, paper clips, you name it. One of my favorite jobs when working was ordering the office supplies and organizing them into the supply cabinet. Opening up the box on delivery day was like Christmas morning.
9. On the other hand, I’m not left brained enough to easily read and understand technical stuff. I hate filling out forms and applications. You know, like the applications for health insurance. Ick.
10. As much as I love my office supplies and organizing, I love my artistic side. I love making crafty things, DIY projects, rearranging my house, decorating, etc.
11. As a youth, I played flute and piccolo, learned the clarinet, took piano lessons (in junior high and college, oddly enough not in high school), sang in the choir, took art class, and wrote poetry. I also took honors English, math and science – though I dropped out of Calculus my senior year because I didn’t need the math credit and I had so many other hard classes that year – and let’s face it, I could do the math but it didn’t come easy for me.
12. Now, I sing, play the guitar, songwrite, occasionally still write poetry, and still don’t like math. I can do it, but let’s face it, it’s still not my strongest talent.
13. People usually see my artsy side and assume I’d be an obviously right brained person. Those people just don’t realize how excited I am by neat little organized rows, the smell of freshly bleached socks straight out of the dryer, an organized bookshelf, a freshly scoured and mopped kitchen, organized cabinets, my labeler, labeled craft boxes full of supplies and all in order, and perfectly arranged and folded dresser drawers.

I’m a walking right brain, left brain, contradiction. 😉

What about you?