This week I realise I’m a scanner. Which is to say, I realise my chaotic, excited way of being, and all the dreams I juggle, makes sense!
On Tuesday I got great news. All these years I’ve regarded the crazy array of careers I’ve dabbled in (restaurant reviewer, political speechwriter, TV dollybird, magazine editor and so on with no discernible theme), the disparate topics of interests displayed on my bookshelf (evolutionary biology to typography), and the endless hobbies I engage with, as signs of a weak, unfocused character. I’m a spray gun! A jack of too many trades and master of jack shit! A dilettante!
But Tuesday I was told I’m none of those things.
No, I’m a “scanner”.
New York-based author Barbara Sher, who coined the term, reckons I’m a classic case. A scanner, she tells me, is genetically wired to be fanatically interested in multiple things at once. “You love everything, right!” Well, yes. “But you get bored and go off on tangents! And you think it’s bad that you keep quitting things and moving on!” Yes, yes, I do! “Don’t! Have some fun with it instead!”