Back in the leaded gas, cassette tape, Commodore Vic-20 days of the early 1980s, I was but a wee, carefree lad. My days were consumed by Dungeons & Dragons, afternoon cartoons, and tv shows about self-driving cars that sounded like a snooty wine sommelier (there’s a market, Tesla). Most of my future thoughts revolved around space exploration, robots, and cyborg dinosaurs (I mean, c’mon). So I surmised that I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up; the kind of scientist that built things; an engineer. And not just any kind of engineer; An inventor. I fell in love with movies like Back to the Future and Real Genius. They were films that depicted cool, quirky characters who built new, incredible, and futuristic inventions. Those characters were mad scientists who weren’t especially interested in following other people’s rules. And I loved their creativity. Most importantly, they made it seem like regular - okay, exceptional - human beings were capable of creating almost anything.
By the seventh grade I was certain I wanted to build spaceships. And we’re not talking basic, run of the mill shuttles that need 3500 tons of thrust to leave the atmosphere and (still) take a day-and-a-half to orbit the Earth. It was interstellar travel I was after and all the physics, chemistry, computer tech, and structural engineering that came with it. Orbiting the earth was cool and all, but what was the point if it took 45 years just to leave our own celestial backyard? We needed space-folds and warp drives. After I built the spacecraft, I would pilot it as well. Again, the idea of living and working by my own rules spoke to me. Scientist, astronaut, explorer, adventurer. So much to experience. I wanted to meet God and find out what It knows, you know? Still do.
As the years went by, I mostly excelled at school. But there was always something missing. I guess most folks would call it…dedication. I was definitely looking for something to give me a spark but I didn’t know what it was. For Christmas in 1988 my wonderful, loving parents made the biggest blunder (though my five older siblings might disagree) of their child rearing career. The gave me a computer. It was just as you’d expect for the time; a gray monstrosity with an 8086 processor (4 MHz with the ‘Turbo’ option) and a whopping 20 megabyte hard drive. Roughly the size of an ‘85 Yugo, you know the one. I’d like to believe they thought, in the long run, that it might inspire me to start programming, to jumpstart my budding career as the world’s foremost super genius. In the short term, however, they knew I needed a word processor for school. Apparently, passing English was more pressing than my plans for the first ‘Weinzirl anti-matter/fusion mix drive’. Whatever, it was their nickel. The machine was pre-windows so it used DOS as the operating system (it’s a real thing, I promise). Consequently, the word processing program was both remarkably simplistic and spectacularly non-intuitive. It was like owning a wheelbarrow designed by a supervillain that required a degree in Bakery Science to operate. For example, pressing ‘Enter’ caused you to navigate away from the text while tasks along the toolbar were activated by pressing the ‘Escape’ key. Seriously…what kind of sadistic fu…
The computer, itself, was not my parents’ error, however. It was the game they gave me to go with it: The Pool of Radiance. The Pool of Radiance was a Dungeons & Dragons game…on a computer! My dearest hobby - role playing games, specifically D&D - that I’d been ensconced in since I was 10 years old was now officially, digitally represented. Sure there had been others; Wizardry, The Bard’s Tale, Ultima. But this game told a story using rules and settings within which I had been well indoctrina…er, educated. And I dove in (Do we use ‘dove’ anymore or is it just ‘dived’ now?). I spent legion hours playing that gem, lost in all its 16-color, EGA glory. I neglected homework - which I still completed, more or less - and ignored most other activities that didn’t involve food. And the best part; no need for ritual sacrifices! (Just kidding. Those fell out fashion in the late 70s). In other words, I was a kid just like any other. But that’s when I really started to fall in love with the idea of story.
Throughout high school I still really felt tied to the concept of becoming an inventor. But I rarely found myself in the position to make that happen. Perhaps it’s fairer to say that I rarely attempted to put myself in the position to make that happen. In my meager defense, there were a lot of distractions. For one, I discovered girls. Which, to be even more fairer(er), got considerably more interesting when they discovered me back. That sentence was basically English, right?
Okay, go ahead. I know you’re all thinking it. It’s palpable. So let me have it:
Yeah, so what? Einstein had a girlfriend and got married. Plus, he had to run from the Nazis. Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with ALS at 21 but was still like Marques Houston up in the club at Oxford and the University of Cambridge. Ran off - oof, poor choice of words - with his nurse after he was already married. We never heard either of them complaining about the ladies sucking up all their essential genius time.
Fair enough. Perhaps I’m just making cowardly excuses for not winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. I get that it’s always been right there for the taking. But if you’re an early subscriber to this site, you might have read that I’m a somewhat disorganized individual. I’ve always struggled with separating future tech inventing, genius time from 'business time'…or at least the pursuit of business time. Consequently, my grades in college were, shall we say, wanting. Moreover, the poor study habits that got me handily through high school did not behoove me in higher education. I suppose the main takeaway here is that had Einstein or Hawking cared less about their work, their work would have probably never happened either. I did enjoy writing, though. And even in the worst of times, the story was still there.
Intellectual deficiencies and a lack of zeal notwithstanding, the biggest blow to my dreams of becoming the greatest scientist and inventor in the history of humankind was the fact that I just didn’t have the cash. No one is going to let you build a spaceship, launch it, and pilot it yourself…unless you have billions of dollars.
Back in the early 90s (we’re moving along now) that figure might have only been in the “several hundred million dollars” category, but it was still more than my pizza delivery job in college would bear. And just to score funding for anything scientific usually requires facilities, equipment, some sort of proposal, and probably the faintest idea what you’re doing…I’m told. The only people with that kind of backing were - and SURPRISE, still are - major companies and the federal government. The latter wasn’t an option. I had a much better chance of getting imprisoned by, rather than receiving any type of grant from, that particular corporation, no matter what Matthew Lesko says.
Getting funded by the private sector basically meant - and again, still does - receiving a salary to build something my employer owns with which I would never be allowed to play. That is, unless it was mass marketed and I happened to buy one for myself. But those weren’t the types of inventions that interested me. My only avenue was to pull a Doc Brown and steal the proverbial plutonium for myself. But since I didn’t have an internet connection back then I couldn’t Google where to find any, so that idea was also a bust. Of course, there was no Google either, but you can see how this informs the whole ‘dedication’ issue. Turns out that redefining space travel is not as DIY as I was hoping. I finally grasped the reality that I was probably not going to explore outer space, at least not in this lifetime. But that’s okay. There are other ways to meet God.
Eventually, I figured out it wasn’t about spaceships and future tech or even time machines designed by (alleged) cocaine distributors. It was about working for someone else. I just didn’t want to do it. But making one’s own rules in life often involves being hedge fund rich or busking in front of a college-town Starbucks poor. So, I did what was easiest when I left university and got a job. The good news is that the story was still there.
In her lovely article, Intuition and the Mind, Medha Murtagh writes through a visual medium about connecting her heart to her work through intuition. She practices taking the time to think about how certain decisions might make her feel in a particular situation, then chooses the one that fits best. Murtagh writes that she practiced this technique of trusting her intuition long enough that it no longer felt safe, but actually preferred. She now uses drawing - a skill she developed recently after listening to her intuition - to ‘access some of the fun and playfulness’ she sees as missing in many people’s lives. It’s short but powerful article, give it a read. This technique - that sounds just like common sense when you read it out loud - can lead us to a better understanding of not just what we want but who we are. It may be something as simple as a hobby like gardening or crocheting or extreme ironing. Perhaps it’s starting a business or creating a new line dog sweaters or both. It doesn’t have to be a new career. It doesn’t have to be monetized. It just needs to be something, as Murtagh points out, that we can connect to our heart.
I’ve spent many years not doing this very thing. And my work life has suffered for it. It always seemed easier to just take a job that I was (remotely) qualified and/or educated for instead of listening to my intuition. An intuition that was peaking out from behind the wall of my conscious thought, politely screaming at me to turn left when all the external road signs pointed straight ahead. My intuition has been telling me about story my entire life. There were brief periods where I listened and those tended to be the my more creative times. But it’s easy to stop listening because the path we think we’re supposed to be on is always there too. It’s taken more than 20 years, but I finally started listening again. This is how I connect to my heart. And it’s been making a significant difference in my life. That, however, is a story for another time.
Photo Credit: Furman University
The Tale of a Failed Genius
Have you also considered neurodiversity as a part of your journey? The creativity, associated disorganization, hyper focus, and distraction (not to mention your on-point parenthetical use) are all potential signs that your brain processes things differently than the normative standard, which isn't a bad thing.
this is great
" I wanted to meet God and find out what It knows, you know? Still do. "
me too