Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

I was taking a class and the teacher and I were discussing a paper I had written. He was commenting on the visual aspects of the paper when I awoke. I spent the next 20 minutes ruminating on my education and my work and realized that all of it pointed back to a word problem I remember from grade school. It was easy for me because being a farm boy, I could visual where the goat would go. My math ability all stems from my being able to see the problem unfold in my head. The same is true of physics and engineering, which are the basis of my entire education. My career was in software development where my talent was visualizing the entire software program and how the pieces fit together. And it explains why I loved the data flow diagram approach in which you actually draw diagrams of how data flows through the software system. I used that one technique for the last 20 years of my career in that field. And it worked very well for me.

And it also explains why photography is my medium of choice in the world of fine art. I see it all at once and don't have to build it up line by line and brush stroke by brush stroke. It is curious that it took 68 years for the revelation to appear!