Strengths and History

I was recently given a creative writing prompt about my greatest strengths for one of my college classes. All of these prompts read the same as job interview questions. Questions I’ve always hated. I usually bullshit my way through them. I don’t like to give specifics about previous jobs because you don’t like to be rude about personality conflicts or how you just had that mean girl in your office you couldn’t stand but the manager just adored.

But it made me think about how my upbringing influenced my strengths. Constantly moving gave me the love of reading because I couldn’t really make friends since I never knew if I was going to move in the next few years but there was always a library and books to read. I always had a good imagination because I was always around adults and had to entertain myself. I wasn’t raised around cousins all the time because we didn’t always live near family. The sibling I lived with was at least 6 years older than I was and who wants their baby sister to tag along everywhere. Probably because of that I don’t really like kids since I didn’t spend a lot of time around them. My parents were involved in their own lives and cares so it was on me and my sister to take care of ourselves. That only got worse when I hit 11 and my mother and I moved across country in the middle of winter when she left my dad.

Honestly, it’s a miracle that I graduated high school with as good of grades as I had and not pregnant. I was left to my own devices so long I was even living with my boyfriend who was 6 years older than myself before graduation and paying rent on an apartment. I’m sure all of this contributes to the need for self reliance and why I’m so quiet about things that I’m doing. I would always wonder if anyone cared, and if I did ask they would over-compensate to try and make up for the neglect they felt guilty for. And I’m sure that some of this is probably in my own head. I probably need a therapist more than a blog, but this is what I have for the moment.

Back to the topic at hand, my husband always mentions how smart I am and how quickly I pick up on things. That can be due to the multitude of jobs I’ve had with their varying systems and having to learn them. Sadly having a lot of jobs isn’t ideal, but I just can’t seem to find a job that I want to do for the rest of my life. I can’t even figure out a craft I want to do for more than a few months.

Unfortunately, there is a bad side on being so smart is that my brain moves so fast that I overthink things and then my mouth opens and I can offend people without thinking. I interrupt my husband constantly because I think I can anticipate what he’s going to say or I feel that he’s going too slow and I just want to get it over with. He gives me the look and I know how I screwed up, but I have a hard time stopping in the midst of doing it.

Research is easy for me, except I fall down a rabbit hole and learn a whole bunch of information and want to put it into play right away. But my body and my budget don’t meet what is in my vision. And I also have to wait for things to grow or others to come to decisions. It’s so frustrating. Theory and actuality are so far apart sometimes.