Thinking the Way Animals Do (2015)
Fascinating, eye-opening article.<p>As a child, I used to have vivid imagination, vivid dreams, be afraid of silly things such as fear literal ghosts that could live in our (dark) corridor, at the attic or the shed on the far side of the garden. I remember taking more pleasure in playing, reading, interacting with other people, playing computer games, telling jokes (I used to be good at this), being more open, having many more friends.<p>In recent years I found few things give me pleasure, I very rarely remember my dreams, I can&#x27;t really get into PnP RPG sessions because I have hard time visualizing what&#x27;s happening, I have practically no friends, low stress resistance, affinity for vector graphics rather than raster (bitmap) graphics. I&#x27;m looking for work as a programmer. Emotionally, I&#x27;m an unhappy person. I&#x27;m barely even scared by horror movies (I never watched them until recently - I was too afraid as a child). I tend to watch &quot;strong&quot; movies, often thrillers, because they make me feel <i>something</i>, unlike most other movies. Girls stay away from me because they think I&#x27;m cold and emotionless, even call me a psycho.<p>This year, I&#x27;ve been diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder. It boils down to I&#x27;m very uncomfortable showing emotions, and even <i>feeling</i> emotions. I avoid situations (even watching certain movies) which make me feel emotion. I won&#x27;t go into detail but SPD is a very good description of how I feel.<p>This article makes me realize what happened to me as I grew up. To a degree it&#x27;s common in all people - moving from a affective, visual kind of mind to a more verbal kind of mind. In me, it&#x27;s pushed to an unhealthy extreme and causing me unhappiness. My psychiatrist told me what, this article is the missing piece of the puzzle as it tells me why and how.<p>Some people have an affinity for drawing, and raster&#x2F;bitmap graphics which is a lot like it. I feel drawn towards vector graphics, SVG and Inkscape because I can utilize my analitycal mind and verbal thinking. With vector, you throw down some shapes and deform them. It&#x27;s more like sculpting in clay or play-dough than drawing!<p>But I digress. Now I know how to move in the opposite direction, towards child-like imagination and the times I miss so much. Call it regress if you like. Away from depression, lack of friends, lack of purpose in life. Don&#x27;t repress emotion, learn to express it. Take singing and&#x2F;or dancing lessons, something I used to be deathly scared of (until I had an insight: I had to endure much worse things). Exercise my imagination the way I exercise my programming skills and work out. Do more vector graphics (they look cool in a github README.rst), but also try to learn drawing the old-school way. A couple of women, not asked, have told me I have a nice voice. I like fantasy and SF, why would I NOT record some audiobooks ? I can focus on short stories that are no longer copyrighted. I lived in a world of irrational fears. People don&#x27;t care about me if they can&#x27;t have a use of me, so they won&#x27;t remember my antics.