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1:50am June 13, 2014
Anonymous asked: I found your writing years ago, back when I'd fallen off the genius track and, in fact, every successful-human (or even just plain human) track I knew, and in reading your stuff I learned how to be a kind of person I'm glad to be. In fact, because of you, I'm someone I like better than the successful genius I might've been/become. Thank you. I'm back on the road to conventional success but glad to have made the detour, and to have read your work.

I am so glad to hear from someone who knows what it means to “fall off the genius track”.  A lot of people don’t get that.  Whether you ever get back on that track or not, know that you’re great as you are, not for who you could be for the expectations of others.  And if you’ve fallen off the track and gotten back on it, use that experience to understand when someone can’t get back on, or has never been on, that track.

I actually like the person I am now, better than the person people wanted me to become.  And I think the person I am now is more authentic to who I am, than the ghost-person in people’s expectations.  And now I’m getting skills back that I lost due to illness, so everything is in flux again, but I know that whoever I am, if I act from whoever I am now, I’ll be okay.  And that’s what I try to tell others.

#ex-gifted, That’s a tag I need to use more often.  Sums up everything so quickly.  Not precisely, because I don’t quite believe in ‘gifted’ the way some people do.  But it’s still good as a tag.

I wonder how many people there are out there like me, or like you, or like other people who’ve experienced this in a different way.  I know that, for instance, a drop in measured IQ score is so normal that there are some rather pushy parents who insist on getting their kids tested at certain ages so they have the highest chance of still scoring in the gifted range, then they don’t get them tested at the ages that their score is going to drop.  Mine dropped quite a bit more than the expected drop, though, for a lot of reasons.  And that’s what I wonder, how many people does that happen to?  How many people go from an actually high IQ to an actually low IQ and then have to deal with all the bullshit around that?   Or other equivalent things that are less about IQ and more about achievement or… other expectations that go along with the idea of 'gifted’ and 'genius’ and all that.

Anyway I’m probably babbling too much right now, and too much of it is about me, not you, but this isn’t the best night for me and I’m rambling.  Hopefully you can excuse me. I’m very glad I’ve had a good impact on your life, that’s what I try to do, that’s why I write things.  If I really have helped anyone, then I’m incredibly grateful to have been able to do that, for whatever reasons that my writing could strike a chord in someone else.