A Few Self Discoveries

So recently there have been a few things I’ve discovered about myself which have come as a bit of a surprise.

The first of which, you may remember, that I mentioned I had jaw problems and was having massages for my jaw to try and stop it from cracking quite so much. I then also had to go and get a night brace because supposedly I was grinding my teeth in the night due to stress and not relaxing my jaw properly, hence the problems I was (and still have a little bit) with my jaw. Well, since I’ve had the night brace, I’ve woken myself up a few times because I’ve noticed myself biting down on my teeth in the night. How weird is that!! I didn’t really believe that I was doing it because I would sometimes share a room with my sister on holidays and of course have had sleepovers and things like that and no-one has ever said that I was grinding my teeth. But apparently I do! I guess probably it’s a recent thing with stress and all. Since I’ve had my night brace I think I do it less now because I don’t wake myself up by doing it very regularly but it does still happen on the odd occasion. Weird hey!

The other is one that Nolz and I have been analysing together. I have always found it really difficult to picture things in my mind. If I think of the beach, I think of a specific photo that I took of a beach five years ago when I was living in Poole. If I think of a person, generally speaking I think of a photo of that person. If I think of an orange I think of a specific time that I have seen an orange and I bring that to mind. Or I think about what I know an orange is like and try to come up with it from what I know it should be like but I get rather stuck on the details and can’t really do it. Anyways, where I’m going with this is that Nolz and I think I have some level of something called aphantasia. This is the inability to create mental images in one mind. Obviously we’re not 100% sure that I have it (and it doesn’t really matter if I do!) and we’ve just been analysing it ourselves, but it does make sense to me that I have some level of it when I analyse my life! For example, I find it very difficult to imagine some of the ideas for the wedding decoration, because it’s something we’re going to be creating and I can’t draw a reference from what I’ve seen. Then, when I’ve seen some pictures of it on pinterest I get it and understand how it might be like. Nolz thinks it’s why I can’t, for the life of me, remember barely any details about films or TV shows or the characters, because I struggle to see the person in my mind. I think this could also be why, in art at school, I was pretty good (if I say so myself) at copying artwork of other artists, but when it came to me having to create something from my own mind I found it pretty difficult! I can’t picture in my mind what I’d like to draw out. With lettering, I look up ideas online and then have to draft it out and I change bits but I don’t really have much of an idea initially how it’s going to turn out.

Another thing I vividly remember, is talking to my sister about revision. She told me a technique she would use whereby she imagined a russian doll (which represented some piece of information), and next to that russian doll was a rubber duck (also representing another piece of information), which then would fall over onto some other object which would be next to another object which would fall out of the window and onto the zipwire that was travelling across from our house to the house across from us in the street which would then lead to another object and another object and so on and so fourth. I remember her telling me about this technique and being completely and utterly astonished/baffled/perplexed that she could imagine all those things going on in her mind at once, and knowing there was absolutely no way I’d be able to do that at all. I get too caught up in thinking about the russian doll and as soon as I try to imagine the rubber duck next to it I forget about the doll because I’m focusing so hard on trying to conjure up the rubber duck…

Anyways, as I said it doesn’t really affect stuff that much it’s just interesting to analyse it and think about it! Nolz told me that if he’s asked to picture something in his mind he can do it just like that and even imagine what it’s texture is likely to be and how it would feel which completely blows my mind and was the moment when I was seriously like, say what? People can actually do that and aren’t necessarily all like me?! I guess probably we all have things that are harder for us to do, it’s just interesting to analyse it!

Well, that’s all from me really! No real news included in this blog post just some self discoveries that I’ve found interesting pondering about! I shall leave you now with a picture of me and a friends dog, just for the lols.