Working For a Friend

You may recall there was some worry about working for a friend. I was especially worried about working for someone who knew I have learning disabilities.

No need to worry here. Two of my learning disabilities have to do with symbols and visual perception. I suck at understanding what a symbol means. Why can't they just write what it means??

Everyone interprets information best in a specific way. Some people want bullet points, some want pie charts, some want an Excel spreadsheet.

This week GQ (thank you!) (this is what we're calling Gay Crush/Boss now) went away on vacation. He's doing work each day though, and yesterday afternoon called me in a panic. He couldn't find a document he desperately needed.

"Can  you go log into my computer and then call me back?"

There is a tiny part of me that cringes every time someone begins to ask me to do something, because I'm terrified my answer will have to be no. No, I don't know how to do that. No, I don't understand what you're asking. No, I can't figure out how to turn on your computer. (That last one is true - I couldn't find the power button. I felt like a total moron.)

When I called GQ back, he wanted me to look on the desktop of his computer for a document he saved there. There were a LOT of documents there. It's all pictures of pieces of paper, with part of the word that saved them as written underneath that. I couldn't find it. I felt bad telling GQ this. There were so many icons I was sure it was there, and I just wasn't seeing it.

He immediately had me pull up a screen that listed the full name of each document on the desktop, in alphabetical order. I can not even express how much easier this was to read. I zipped through the list top to bottom, then bottom to top, then looked at the documents starting with the letter GQ's missing document should have.

My answer changed from, "I don't see it," to "It's not here." It went from me not being able to find something, to knowing it wasn't there to be found.

I don't know how much GQ knows about learning disabilities. Most people who don't have one themselves just know someone who's dyslexic. Or hyper. While I'm a tiny bit dyslexic, and a bit more hyper, neither of those are my problems. I am so grateful to GQ for instantly understanding that I needed to look at the documents a different way, and knowing how to lead me towards that.

P.S. I found the document. It was saved elsewhere.
P.P.S. For some unknown reason, yesterday was an especially retarded day for me.
Example 1: I was trying to download an app onto the iPad GQ gave me. It took three Google searches, help from one friend by text, and help from one random guy in our office suite.
Example 2: Couldn't find the power button to turn on the computer. Had to ask for help.
Example 3: When looking at a dollar amount that said 80 billion dollars, I interpreted it as "80 hundred million dollars." For some reason, my brain stopped in the millions and could not make the leap to billions. So embarrassing.

I once told my mother that while I wouldn't actively pursue it, I'd be interested to see if getting a traumatic brain injury would alter my learning disabilities for the better. She smiled sadly and told me no, no it would not, and explained why. Unfortunately one of my learning disabilities is memory, so I can't remember her explanation.