Left brained vs. right brained

After listening to this wonderful new podcast I found on itunes I have decided that I am both left and right brained.  I am heavily into quilting right now and I found this podcast called The Scientific Quilter.  I have only listened to one of her shows so far but it was right up my alley.  She talked about the number pi and had numerous ideas on how to make quilts using the number pi.  I have my own story on pi which I'll share with you later.

Right-brained people are creative...

Left-brained people are analytical...

I have always felt like a right-brained person trying to fit into a left-brained society.  I have since come to realize that I am two sides of the same coin.

In high school I loved art class.  I couldn't wait to see what the next assignment was going to be and then start creating whatever came to mind.  This was 1987 when computers were just starting to make their way into a few classrooms.  My art teacher wanted to delve into this whole new world of computer art but I didn't.  (I would much rather hold a paintbrush in my hand and smell the acrylic paint waft through the air). One of our assignments was to cut a picture out of a magazine, draw a small scale grid on it, then draw a much larger grid on a larger piece of white paper then paint each individual square according to the smaller picture.  This assignment was not simply to enlarge the picture but to get a sense of how pixels in a computer work.  Our finished work was supposed to look like a mosaic which most of them did.  I can't remember if I did a slice of chocolate cake or corn on the cob with a big pat of butter melting over the top of it.  I think I had the cake and my friend had the corn.  Anyway, they turned out wonderful and I was very pleased with mine... if only I could find it now.

Also in school I loved math, especially algebra and the quadratic equation.  I liked working with numbers.  In college when I worked in a video store I memorized all the numbers of the corresponding videos (they were five digits each).  Later in life I decided I wanted to learn the number pi (3.14159).  I challenged myself to learn the first 50 digits; I can recite about 30 so far.  This may be bordering on obsessive compulsive too but that's for another blog entry.  I like numbers.  I currently work in a bank and numbers are my thing.

Then on the other hand, or the other side of the brain as it were, I love to paint, sew, draw, bead... you name it.  If it's creative I've either tried it or will sometime in the future (again another blog entry for a list of things I still want try).  I used to struggle with labeling myself as left or right brianed but now I'm embracing the fact that I'm both.