On My Brain...

I am a right brained...and I'm pretty sure that's not an official term.

If you don't know if you are right brain dominate or left brain dominate there are a lot of tests on the internet to tell you. It's pretty easy to know though. Left brain dominant people are rational, analytical and objective. They tend to be good at thinking logically through problems, are organized and time sensitive. Sometimes they even like math! Yikes! Right brain dominant people are random, intuitive and subjective. They tend to be creative and imaginative. They can sometimes be late and a bit unorganized. Have you seen my desk lately? More yikes! We all use both sides of our brain, but usually one hemisphere is more dominant than the other.

Growing up, I feel, my world was predominately left brain focused. School is structured to cater to the left brain. It's hard to measure right brain output, so it is often left out of some curriculum. (Right brain activities do exist in schools but my experience was that most activities were left brained activities, I'm sure many other people's experiences were different.)  Because of this, I often call myself a right brained person trained to be left brained. I am anal about being on time. I prefer things organized (even if they look messy to others) and I like rules. I organize my books by color (is this a right brain thing or a left brain thing?...hmmmm). Despite these things, I score off the charts as a right brain dominant person. It isn't even a contest.

The point. For a long time...due mainly to school...I ignored the right side of my brain. My dominate side. I think this affected me more than I care to say. I felt heavy. Confused about who I was and what I was doing. When I found a creative outlet...photography...I felt like I had been freed. It's opened up other creative outlets for me to use again. I felt more confident and in control of my life. I felt a shift in myself. I felt balanced again. I still do all of the OCD left brained things that I've always done, but I do right brained things too. It's like I discovered that I have more than one leg. I have two! What?! They both work? This is great!

I had a drawing teacher my freshman year of college (before I started to ignore my right side) that taught us to draw using the right side of the brain. We did exercises and practiced drawing without the left side analyzing everything. An amazing thing happens when the right side takes over. I call it "being in the zone". Time stops...or stops mattering. Distractions, worries and fears fall away. It's just me and the creative process. Sometimes when this happens I'll be sitting in the same position for hours. When I finally move I realize that I'm in pain, or a large part of my body has fallen completely asleep. Usually, a greater amount of time than I thought has passed. Sometimes, I look at the thing that I created while I was "in the zone" and think...where did that come from?...how did I do that?. It's wonderful and in this busy world, a very hard place to find.

I appreciate the left side of my brain. It gets things done. But it also is the part of me that worries and causes stress. It's the parent. I try to let the kid be in control sometimes too...I'd like to do it more often. I like that kid. She's pretty cool.

P.S. I drew the header from some photos of random buildings in Bath. I would love to go to Bath (not the tub, the city) someday .