vincentclark dot com

I have never been ashamed of being dyslexic, in fact I speak of it freely, and sometimes often. A big reason why I do that is that I know there are more people like me than people different and I want people to know they are not the only one. When we make our soon to be famous, figure 8, then you will see why this is not only ironic, but shamefully.

I remember seeing after school specials and a Mark Harmon movie where there is some kid that is dyslexic and doesn’t want to tell anyone because they were embarrassed. I never understood that. If you can’t see the letters right, why don’t you say something, and, why so secretive about it? They always find this person because the dyslexic writes a note to a new friend and swears that person to never tell anyone. That person struggles and then finally tells someone. How lame!

As for me, I am I tend to flip the letters and numbers, b, g, d, q, 9, and 6. The experts tell me that the reason that I don’t see it clearly is that my brain figures it out before i realize that there is a problem. If I was just looking at one letter then that would be ok, but looking at full sentences, and even more daunting an entire page, my brain needs to work in overdrive to correct the mistakes before the end user, me, notices the mistake. It was from this I coined the phrase, “If at first you don’t succeed, do it again before anyone notices.”

The shortcoming of mine affects my reading comprehension more than anything else. In my life time I have read two books cover to cover, three if you include the Growing Pains episode book. The best way for me to read a book is to listen to it. There are two problems with that. The first is since the book is read to me the voice of the author is supplied and I cannot use my own. This is great when the speaker can do a far better job at speaking the book than you. This is painful if the author is speaking like he or she is reading a menu to you. Unfortunately these menu readers do a majority of textbooks in college, which is one of three reasons why I chose not to go back.

The other problem is how the information is put together. Some information is arranged best for textbooks allowing one to make notes and does not take into consideration someone listening to the book.

One might assume that the one listening to the book can quickly take down notes while they are reading. This would then require the listener to pause and resume the book. An easier task might be to write down the times of something interesting and then go back and review it later and then compile the notes from there.

Why does this not work? Simple, if the person was able to write down notes and organize an analog audio book in such a fashion, not to mention navigating chapters, which are more conceptual when dealing with an audio book and not something that you can flip to, then that person really wouldn’t need to have the audio book.

It is this reason that compelled me into technology, I wanted to make things easier for people like me to navigate through this kind of information. I have learned a lot in speech recognition and text to speech. Despite great progress, there is still something lagging. I believe this is true because the people that need the information most are not the ones directing the people sorting the information.

Without the advanced super system that would allow me to get the information and process it tailored specifically to me, there are a lot of things in technologies that exceeds my education far beyond anything tried in the past. I have learned some tricks and built some crude programs.

I spent too long being really smart but not well educated. With the ability to get science, philosophy, religion, novels, and history books through iTunes has opened a new world for me. I am like a kid in a candy store. Depending on what I am listening to is what my current passion is for. Sometimes it is understanding the grand unifying theory of everything other times it is understanding the strife in the middle east. As each book intertwines I like to draw parallels and look for patterns, which are everywhere.

There are some areas where I still struggle, mainly with forms. Sometimes it is an envelope that some office employee put together as a part of an approved package without thinking about the person needing to process them. The worst part is when the forms you need to fill out are the forms you need to get help. This is a big reason why my bills don’t get paid, my license periodically gets suspend, my wages garnished, and so on. I have always had the money to pay my bills, but would have far more if they were paid on time. I am lucky there is now direct deposit and automatic bill pay, of which I would be completely lost.

I find myself in a constant state of turmoil, and more than anything, I hate to ask for help. Partly because when I do I have a lot of forms to fill out, and the biggest lesson learned in college, never call in favors, low level counselors will hate you for that.

Needless to say it takes a lot for me to say that there is something that I need help with. I found that people, mostly really “understanding people” see that as a sign of incompetence. They see it as you being disable and unable to lead others or even work with them.

I am the most gifted person I know. I see things in ways that no other does. After being friend with Victor for almost half of my life I finally was able to show him something that he did not see as totally crazy, granted he won’t concede the ideas are not crazy, just that they might not be. I have spent a life time trying to communicate with others. People often say, either you are really really crazy, or really really genius, but I am not sure which one. Recently as the education has improved I have found that I am tired of being crazy. Still to me the biggest hurdle is the forms, simple little forms, merely the act of mailing something as simple as my taxes or my xbox 360 to be repaired is almost impossible. I understand that the best way for me to interact with the world is to conform to it standards, but that is a hopeless feat, mainly because there are more people like me that not are different. I struggle for that interface in which I can be understood, but even that requires forms. These are simple forms, forms I know Jen would help me with, I know my mother would help me with, but I don’t ask.

I eyes swell when the reason become very clear, I am simply ashamed and do not want people to know that I cannot do something as simple as filling out an address change card. I know people don’t understand because it is so easy, or at least it should be really easy. So I don’t do it, and I fall behind, and I find myself in that state of always digging out of a hole.

Simply because I don’t want people to know, and then I realize that I am the kid in the Mark Harmon movie and I am the dumb jock in the After School Special, I write long posts and complicated notes so people will discount it and not notice, but there is nothing I would want more.

This is why I am in a cube, with half walls on the 18th floor and not doing what I am capable of. Or is this the beginning, and we find ourselves looping through the figure eight, infinity, “Time never dies. The circle is not round.” The reason why the circle is not round is that the circle is infinity, which is an intersecting loop. So clear to me.

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