A Hostage of Right Brain Disorder

For those of you who wonder about the title…yes, I am a victim of Right Brain Disorder.

What, exactly, IS Right Brain Disorder you ask?

Science tells us that, in right hand dominant people, the left side of the brain is the dominant hemisphere. The left hemisphere deals in cognitive thought, language and communication, technical details and higher logic among other things. The right hemisphere of the brain in a normal person is in charge of creative, visual, sensory, emotional and artistic thoughts. This side is entirely visual and therefore nonverbal.

In “normal” people, the right side usually is typically hanging out in the background, content to occasionally suggest a different shade for the new paint in the den or some other mundane visual or emotional tidbit. The left brain is usually in total control, dictating the ebb and flow of each day and content to allow the meeker right side to have it’s occasional, non-verbal, word.

My mind, on the other hand, is firmly under the control of a swashbuckling brute that is a multi-tasking, musical, artsy, sensitive, inventive but overbearing buccaneer of a right hemisphere .

Think “Robin Williams meets Alexander Calder meets Sting, then they go off and clone off a mutant Frankenstein/love child…with ADD on steroids.

Now you begin to understand.

I am not the one in control here…and the one who IS in control is totally non-verbal. I, the right side with the communication skills, am left to function as the sad press secretary for him…Mongo, as he wishes to be known. The name is something about his high school nickname…trust me, it’s wasn’t my idea…I’m logical.

My job is now reduced to posting out occasional press releases and trying vainly to keep up with the daily output of art, music, sculpture and any of a hundred other odd, meaningless creations.

Oh, and did you notice? I just used the word “meaningless” in reference to something he did or thought, so now he’s pissed at me and I’ll have to go attend one of his “sensitivity indoctrination sessions”. Oh joy….please shoot me…now.

Please feel free to check back often and see if I can maintain what little patience/sanity I have left.

Late Tuesday afternoon, a rather nice cabin sailboat motored up the coast from the south and moored just off to the south of our condo. I couldn’t make out the name of the boat, but I could make out that she was registered in London…and I doubted that was London, KY.  Katy commented that the boat “messed up our view” of the ocean, but I retorted that it actually improved the view, as it seemed to be a fairly nice boat.

Yesterday I went down to the beach at about 10:30 and noticed that the rubber inflatable runabout that had been stowed on the stern of the sailboat was missing. Looking to my right, I saw the runabout on the beach about 300 yards away. Curious, I headed down the beach to see what was up.

It turns out that the boat was owned by a 20something Brit that was making his way around the Atlantic…really…all the way around the Atlantic. He had bought the boat in France earlier this year, sailed south around Spain, made his way across the straight of Gibraltar and then cruised down the west coast of Africa. He then crossed the Atlantic making landfall at Rio de Janeiro, then cruised up the east coast of South America and made his way through the Caribbean chain to end up off the coast of Florida.

Why here do you ask? Simple. He uses a Mac…which was in need of repair. It turns out that there is a Mac repair shop about 3 blocks away, so stopping here allows him to walk to the shop to have his Mac fixed. Another beach friend, who also happens to be British, commented that he’d come a very long way just to get his computer repaired.

I didn’t get to find out more, or for that matter even his name, as he was trying to launch the runabout into some rather big surf. My British friend and I got him over the rocks and on his way safely.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering what my life would have been like if I had the courage to simply strike out on a trip that might take a year or more at that age. This one is going to require further introspection.

Stay tuned.

After a long interruption caused by this thing called “life”, we’re back to live action. The blog managed to get hacked at some point in between, so some of the old content is gone forever. I do, however, have some of my oldest posts that I’m going to re-edit and post in the near future.

I realized something last night…something that has been hanging around the periphery of my consciousness for a long time waiting for a chance to scream “I told you so!”.

People like me, sufferers of RBD, face an unusually difficult time in life when it comes to trying to be a helpful member of society. Left brainers don’t tend to get overly involved with a lot outside their own sphere of influence, so they tend to not be in situations where people can rebuff their efforts. Right brainers typically are a little intimidated by the technical side of getting involved, so they tend to only get involved in things that have little chance for failure.

RBDers, on the other hand, are willing and able to jump right in and offer assistance to anyone with any problem that falls remotely into the RBDer’s own personal knowledge base. Having had to find creative ways to solve lots of problems for themselves, mostly self inflicted ones at that, the RBDer is both capable of doing a lot and being confident in their own ability to make it happen.

Unfortunately, in a lot of these cases, the RBDer is rebuffed or worse because the person on the receiving end of the offer of assistance views any help as an attempt to butt in or steal the spotlight. The RBDer is usually embarrassed on the spot by being told to butt out or worse. Also, because of the hyper-sensitive nature of the typical RBDer, embarrassment is usually the worst possible thing someone could do to them.

I was on the receiving end of a major “butt-out” a while back, while trying to help someone accomplish something that would make him look good in front of a lot of his peers. The task that I was working on at the time was one that I have been involved with longer than the “help-ee” has even been walking this planet. I was made to feel quite stupid and quickly slunk back to my regular post with my tail between my legs. That is a mistake that I will never make again. The person involved is/was a good friend, but I can’t trust that anything he says is sincere after that issue.

The really sad thing here was that he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. My assistance was in doing something that no one would have known about and it possibly could have resulted in major plaudits being delivered to him by people whose opinions matter.

I suppose that, in the future, I should simply be more self centered and ask “what’s in it for me?” about everything that I touch from now on or simply refuse to act when the opportunity arises. The problem is that I have a real desire to help people and it seems to be the way of our world today that the average person will only focus on one’s self.

When you have a borderline addiction to helping people that could give a ratzazz about you, it is a situation where you are going to get your feelings slammed on a regular basis.

I suppose that I will keep on trying…it’s just how I am. Besides, the last person that actually succeeded in trying to selflessly help everyone he ever met got nailed to a tree for his efforts…and he would do it again in a heartbeat.