Order, Please?

Spoiler Alert! I don’t get much money for writing (not words nor music) . . . my main source of income comes from teaching. However, we’re not talking traditional, in-the-classroom, school teaching — though I’ve tried that a couple of times — we’re talking door-to-door, in-your-home, music lessons. Anyone old enough to remember when the doctor used to make house calls? Yeah, it’s like that.

But this anecdote isn’t now, it’s then. And back then, I did accept a job doing that dreaded in-the-classroom thing —

Before we go any further, however, you need to know that I was a good kid. I avoided trouble — for the most part — and didn’t get to a first-name basis with any principals throughout my scholastic career.

— and on day two, I was called down to the principal’s office!

No lie! The problem was that I didn’t seem to understand the way things worked. I was informed/reprimanded that there were certain procedures which needed to be adhered to . . . even if, admittedly, they weren’t the best or most efficient procedures!

After the scolding, I was handed off to the school psychologist — that’s the one who doesn’t prescribe drugs, right? I always get psychologist/psychiatrist confused — who promptly administered one of those tests where you fill in the little dots with a #2 pencil. There were several dozen questions and they all were worded in varying shades of “When I recognize a problem I: A. ignore it, B. tell someone about it, C. try to solve it myself, D. wait till it happens again.” [Note: if they were so big on procedure, shouldn’t the psych test have come before the hiring?]

After scrutinizing my responses, the bespectacled man said something akin to, “Ahh, there’s the problem, you are an abstract, nonlinear thinker. You can’t be that and be a teacher. Teachers need to be concrete, linear thinkers. You don’t belong in this field.”

Good news: That finally explained why there had always been random fragments of thoughts and ideas bouncing frantically around in my head — imagine someone tossing a crate of ball bearings onto a trampoline from a second story balcony. Yeah, it’s like that.

More good news: It also explained why writing could often be such an absolutely excruciating chore: it’s unnatural for me to do just about anything in a logical, sequential order. Even as a kid in school, when I was told to number my paper from 1 to 20 for a pop quiz, I would skip around (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 17, 16, 14, 19, 8, 6 . . .). The end result was sequential (number 17 was placed on the 17th line), but how I got there was — at least, to the casual onlooker — chaotic!

Bad news: I liked teaching; I didn’t want to quit.

Which brings us to now. Well, technically it brought us to two days ago, but that’s relatively now, isn’t it? Two days ago, I stumbled upon a piece of software that promised to help make writing a more natural process for me. In short, the program claimed I could continue to write in my scatterbrained manner: depicting ideas and paragraphs and scenes and chapters and characters as they came to me, not in the order they would ultimately be presented to my readers. Then, after all the words had crossed over from the spectral realm of thoughts to the (semi-)concrete world of data on a hard drive, utilizing an impressively wide assortment of tools and strategies found in the software, I could stitch my novel snippets together into a much larger whole, something that made sense to someone besides myself!

With a great deal of skepticism, I downloaded the free trial version, and, within minutes, my jaw was dangling loosely like a tire swing swaying in a gentle breeze. Here was one hugely expansive composite of code devoted to nonlinear thinking! To be honest, I wasn’t as in awe of the software as I was stunned by the revelation that there must be a whole mess of other people out there who — like me — don’t think right! If not, this software company would have gone out of business years ago.

Even better? My thinking wasn’t chaotic or faulty, it was just nonlinear. And that was okay. In fact, not only was it okay, but according to the hype accompanying the download, I had advantages that people who were linear could never have.

Gloat moment.

Even better still, if there are cadres and corps of other folks out there who suffer from the repeated barrages of random idea shards rocketing about their brain cavities, that must mean that some of those folks are students! And, if there are students who are not linear thinkers then those students are probably best served by teachers who are also not — 

You know where this is headed, right? Good. Then I’ve actually made a point. First time for everything! Now, let me finish.

Those students are probably best served by teachers who are also not linear thinkers!

Oh yeah, in case you forgot, I don’t get much money for writing (not words nor music). And even after being advised to consider other options, my main source of income comes from teaching. Don’t let someone else dictate if you should or shouldn’t do what you do.