"Baldrick, you wouldn't know a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing 'Subtle Plans Are Here Again'."
At work (and outside it) I am told that one of my strengths is that I can pull together pretty diverse and scattered facts to come up with good working hypotheses. Because I do this more by instinct than by any formal method I feel obliged to spend a fair amount of time trying to find statistical means to show that my associations are real. Also, it has only been with the passage of time that I no longer simply grasp the first plausible idea that comes along but can tear that first model apart and try again in a new direction. Both of these checks (quantification and looking for alternatives) are required in real life or otherwise free association is just an open invitation to paranoia. To be able to solve problems in this way I find it necessary to first dig around in the machinery of the problem, just to see how the different components function, and then I stand well back so that I can take it all in and see how the pieces interconnect (I'm no good at pure "top down" or "bottom up" solutions). The main problem with living life this way is that I miss the middle ground. Either my head is up in the clouds or I am staring intently at the floor. I really do overlook the obvious things floating under my nose. I miss really obvious jokes while searching for an obscure punchline. Another big problem is the level of indirection in human communication. Depending on how close people are, personally and socially, they use different levels of openness in communication. That is something I have to work really hard at. I'm at my most comfortable in very small groups (one or a few close friends) or in crowds as I can understand both the crowd's consciousness and that of my friends. I have difficulties in room-sized groups of people I know vaguely as it requires too much of a superficial level of politeness. This is not to say that I am not impressed by people who really know how to work a room. I just don't know how it is done. Today, in that regard, I was in the presence of an artiste. Wow.
"Your disguise is as convincing as a giraffe wearing dark sunglasses trying to get into a polar bear's-only golf club."