Square pegs and Round Holes

It is a scientific fact that our thought process is broken up into two basic categories... right brain and left brain thinking. Each of us falls under one or the other category with a rare few of us who are equally able to think with both sides of our brain without suffering through total meltdown.

The left brain person is analytical, processes thought through reason and sticks to the fact. Shit happens, they deal with it and they move on, never to think about it again. They are good at math, science and see a situation on a single plain. They are rarely descriptive and do not tend to "get" exageration or sometimes even humor.

The right brain person in creative, sometimes tend to exagerate such as "a BILLION" of something instead of the left brain thinking of "exactly 238" of something. They are descriptive when telling a story and insert emotion into a story such as "Oh my gosh, I was so frightened". Their humor is sometimes misunderstood by the left brain thinker and they are perceived as eccentric at times. They may not be good at spelling or math but they will tell a good story.

I am a right brain thinker and my husband is a left brain thinker and here is a perfect example of a typical conversation that is lost in translation... We are standing in the line at the grocery store behind a man who is listening to me recount my hectic day to my husband. He smiles as I tell Bear about fighting with the insurance company in an effort to get them to pay for his most recent hospital stay. This is left brain thinking and it wears me out completely. Bear says
"When we leave here, do you want to go to Wal Mart and pick up a few more things?" I say
"Honey, all I want to do is go home and release the girls", referring to the fact that my bra is too tight and I need to take it off. The man chuckles as he gets my attempt at humor. Bear responds by saying
"I walked them before we left home!" In his active left brain thought process, he thought I was being literal and referring to our two dogs, "the girls". The man in front of us is now laughing to the point where tears are streaming down his cheeks, obviously he is a right brain thinker and sees the humor in the misunderstanding.
"Never mind". I tell my confused husband.

Sitting in H&R Block the other day while my tax person, Jody is asking me questions such as,
"Now what percentage of your home is your office and what percentage of your property taxes and insurance goes to the kennel?" My creative mind is thinking about the total "math" of the questions and suddenly goes completely blank. She keeps talking and my brain has shut down in defense of avoiding the thought process that is required to answer her questions. Suddenly, all I am hearing is "Blah, blah, blah" because I have inadvertently tuned her out. To me, being a right brain thinker, I am a square peg and Jody is trying to engage me in a left brain conversation which to me is a big round hole. Folks, no matter how hard ya try, you can NOT fit a square peg into a round hole!

Right brain thinkers or all of us square pegs want to tell a story, we want to elaborate on the details and not try to analyze them. We don't care if the math adds up or if the words are spelled correctly, we want to describe the perfect summer day, not sit with a calculator and figure out exactly what time the sun rose and set. We want to be out riding our horses instead of figuring out how much fencing to buy to build them a corral. We want to play, not evaluate and we want to take off our bra at the end of the day and release "the girls" and we want our husbands to understand that we are not referring to walking the dogs!

Lately it feels as though this square peg has been shoved into too many round holes in her every day life. Taxes, paying bills, balancing the checkbook, dealing with insurance companies, I long for a cold drink, some island music and a sunny beach. I long to tell a story without having to explain every detail, I long for time with another right brain thinker so they understand me without having to explain myself. I long for all the round holes to either expand so I fit in them better or close completely so I dont have to worry about fitting in where I dont belong.

Aside from this blog, I havent had time to write a single creative word since my last two books were released and I am bursting at the seams to set aside all my left brain tasks and just give in to a few days of creative thinking! That is the view from the back of my horse...a world full of other square pegs and the demise of our lives being bogged down with responsibility, endless round holes that we just can't seem to fit into. I LOVE all the left brain thinkers in my life but if you are a right brain thinker, give me a call now and then and dream with me, lets talk about everything but nothing too important or analytical. Let's not get sucked into those round holes and forget how to play. I don't have all the answers to the questions that are being asked of me but I can tell you a story! I can't tell you how to balance your checkbook but I can tell you where to hide it for a while so you just dont have to deal with it. I can't tell you what time the sun rises and sets but for the time between sunrise and sunset, I can sure as hell take you on a horseback ride that won't ever forget! So if you are a right brain thinker, go play and let the left brain thinkers be repsonsible for the details.
Blessings
Tena