See how the Google Bard AI rewrote this when I requested it to more professional
my name is Geoff Greig, but that's not who I am. that's just the name that was given to me, to identify me.
the main thing I am is what my thoughts are. but to everybody else it's mainly what I do and say.
I find it amusing that when people ask for proof of ID, they're actually asking for some sort of documentation with a person's name on it. when I'm asked that question, I say I am me.
I consider myself to be different than most people that I meet. and I'm proud of my difference.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s when ther were countercultures. I never participated in such activities but I was amused to watch them. I'm disappointed in that lot of what these countercultures stood for have now been thrown aside. perhaps it was a fashion thing.
I remember one incident of my difference coming out, when I was at high school walking along one day with some of my friends, along the same side of the road that we always walked on. I suggested that we should try walking on the other side of the road. which I did. but the others didn't follow me.
I wasn't particularly good academically. in later years I realised this was because I had a learning disability. I did not learn the same way that other people learnt. rather than accepting the mainstream way of learning I basically rebelled, reasoning to myself, that the problem was with the system, not me. this ended up with me getting an education but not a qualification. See my take on education
luckily I ended up working in an area where qualifications were not as important as putting the numbers on the board, initially as a salesperson and then later on as a computer programer, so ended up being ok financially. also the fact that I ended up working for myself helped alot See Money Or Why some people have it and others don't?
I really love science. in particular the scientific methodology. I love logic. unfortunately most of the rest of the world doesn't. I find a lot of the people I communicate with don't even know what logic is. I've realised over the years that most people are most far more emotional than they are logical.
my daughter, who knows more about these things than I do and is more perceptive than I am, says I tend to be on the autistic spectrum. I don't have as much empathy as the majority of people. to a certain extent I'm thankful for that, because it means it's difficult for people to hurt me, emotional.
I remember in a previous sales job I had, another person mentioned that I didn't come in of a morning and say how is everybody going. I would just start talking straight away about work things. I hadn't learnt the subtleties of “conventional” conversations.
it also means that I can't read people as well as other people can. But on the other hand I probably also means that other people can't read me easily. however I tend to be very expressionistic in my facial expressions.
I've always been a big picture person. I prefer to look at the whole rather than individual pieces. I dislike the term “an I for detail”. although I see the need for in some situations, I feel like society is to much interested in the little things and don't realise the direction ther travelling in.
I'm sceptical about many things and do and have not accepted many thing as a fact. I like to see proof or the logic behind things.
when at secondary school I was called the question kid. I very really accepted what I was told. as I got older I found people would be put off by me asking, “why”. I discovered I could soften it a bit by asking “if it's alright to ask, why”
because I worked a lot of time with software I can easily understand the difference between software and hardware, although I have difficulty explaining it to a novice.
in more recent times I have realised many of the things in our society are in fact, just like software, virtual. like laws, money and the measurement of time. perhaps my bigger picture outlook also helps me to see that. as a consequence this has givin me a greater perspective of life, society and culture.
I don't know why but I have always had a sense of fairness.
Update: originally i wrote all this in January 2021. I've just recently come home from my trip to Melbourne (June 2023) for my Aunty Caths funeral. I realised, after hearing my cousin Michael talking about his mother, that like him, I picked up my sense of fairness from my parents. I didn't realise it until then.
I feel it is wrong that some people have more than others. also wrong that some people feel they have greater entitlement than others and that gets enshrined in culture. even more wrong that most people accept or justify it, without any thought. Why?
you may have noticed many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in this document. although some of it may actually be mistakes on my part, because I don't have an eye for detail, a lot of it is deliberate.
one of my differences is that I no that English grammar and spelling are wrong and need to be changed. the systems the problem not me. change can be incremental. this is my way, my attempt of changing it. See spelng
I do appreciate that many people are suspicious of anybody that's different. such that many people would be suspicious of me.
the easiest thing for them to do is to say that I'm crazy. but not say why.