If you give me some software and let me play, I’ll play around and work out how to use it.

If you give me a text book, I’ll follow the information and learn what to do (one of the biggest issues I had with maths at school).

There are so many areas of my life where I pick up skills and just know how to do things. The biggest area this comes out is my writing. I seem to just know how to write a story.

The challenge I have with this is that formal learning doesn’t fit this method of learning.

If I try to quantify how I do something, especially to put it into a course or program to teach others, I can’t do it.

If I attend a course or class on something I know how to do, I end up feeling as though I am not good and can’t do whatever the thing is the course is teaching me!

One of the most frustrating things is that my skills often aren’t recognised because I don’t have a piece of paper to show that I know what I know. And I also can’t push through the courses to get that piece of paper as it is more harmful to my mental health and self-esteem than people seem to understand.

Another frustrating thing is that I often don’t acknowledge all the things that I know, or how valuable these skills are because I have picked them up somewhere or just seem to know how to do something, rather than being taught.

I also forget that not everyone has the skills that I have, that they don’t find things, like writing a story or doing bookkeeping, easy. I forget that these are skills that people will pay me for…

I love learning about stuff, picking up skills. It’s harder when I’m burned out, almost as though my brain is so full there’s no room for anything new, but that doesn’t stop me. When I’m burned out, those new skills need to be somehow relevant to me and my interests… even then, I love learning about things. It seems to be simply how I’m wired.

It’s also nice when I go to something and find out that whatever I’ve taught myself or picked up along the way is absolutely on the right track.

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