Gifted Kid or Just Lucky Guesser?

When I was in 4th or 5th grade, I got placed into one of those "gifted" programs in the school. For one afternoon out of the week, all the "gifted" kids went to a different classroom where they would work on trying to solve complex problems, like how a truck driver could pass under a bridge that was four inches too low compared to his load height. I thought it was pretty stupid and spent most the time being happy I wasn't in my normal class while working on tracing pictures of Simpsons characters in the hopes if I did it enough I'd be able to draw them free hand one day (spoiler alert: not even close). My time in the gifted class lasted all about a month before I was told it probably wasn't a good fit for me and I was sent back to my normal classroom. And then until the end of that school year I was ridiculed for getting kicked out of the gifted program by kids that were never even considered for the program. Somewhere in that is a life lesson nine year old me would be incapable of learning. 

Now I wouldn't say I was actually a gifted kid. If anything, I'm pretty sure my lack of common sense and social awareness qualified me for whatever you would call the programs for kids that were the opposite of being "gifted." But I did have a pretty good memory in my younger years, at least for things I read. Like I could read the assigned textbook reading just once and remember nearly everything from it, at least well enough to ace most tests. After that I usually forgot it, but that kind of seemed how school was designed to be anyways. And I think it's that good memory (most of which I've ruined with alcohol and age) that made people think I was smarter than I really was. The other problem with having such a memory though was that it made a lot or learning seem easy to me. So much so that when learning got hard, I often ignored it to pursue learning something else that seemed easy again.

Somewhere on Facebook (so obviously very sound medical journalism) some years ago I read about a phenomenon called "gifted kid syndrome," essentially saying kids that grew up smarter often struggle later in life because they haven't developed the study/work skills necessary for when things get more challenging. (There's other things involved with it as well, but for the purpose of this blog, that's what I'm focusing on). And at the time, as much as some of those things in that article clicked for me, I dismissed the article as a bunch of stupid excuses people make for being lazy.

The problem here is I was blaming the symptom, not the disease. 

I realized this over the weekend due to a very poor performance for myself at a gaming tournament. And my immediate thought was just to quit this game and move on to something else. For as much money as I've spent on this game and as much time as I've put into learning about it, my actual playing experience is very limited. But because in my first actual competitive experience I didn't do extremely well or even relatively well (or any sort of well as it really was a piss poor showing on my part), I wanted to be done with it. And then I started thinking about this series of thoughts I was having and how familiar they felt. I do this all the time. 

Nearly every time I've taken a class and it ended up needing more time/commitment than I thought it would, I've dropped the class. Some times I've retaken the class at least a little more prepared mentally, but usually it just stays a withdrawal on my record and I take a year off before taking something else just to try and keep from having to reapply to the school again. 

I barely go to jiu-jitsu because it takes an actual dedication to learn. I don't know why (probably because I'm pretty close to being the opposite of "gifted"), I thought I'd be a bit of a natural when I started jiu jitsu so many years ago. But when it turned out that wasn't the case, it got a lot harder to show up. And even when I do decide to go back, it's usually only a few weeks at a time because that's all it takes for me to re-realize it's never going to get easy for me, so maybe I should look for something else that will.

I love music, probably more than anything else. But learning an instrument? I quit guitar before ever having to deal with my fingers bleeding from playing too much. And once I realized I wouldn't be a natural on piano like Mozart was, that dream got left behind as well.

And writing... I always thought writing was one of the easiest things on earth and I could just put that off through my younger years cause I'd have all the time I wanted to knock it out when I got older. But you know what? Writing actual stories with real character development and plots without tons of holes takes a good bit of work. And while in my head there's hundreds of stories I think would be awesome to tell, when it comes time to put in the work, I suddenly find it's not so easy and go looking for something that is. 

I'm sure this applies to other things in my life, but this seems like enough examples. The point is, even after quitting drinking and doing some of the things I thought needed to be done to get my life in order, I'm still my own worst enemy.