Some of us are terrific at doing things the hard way. I can blame some of my peculiar talent for that on being dyslexic enough to consistently, persistently turn right when I should go left, push when I ought to pull, and stand up when I am expected to sit down. A bit of my wrong-way gift comes from being too intimidated to ask for help and too impatient to study the proper technique. Some share of the problem lies in my sheer stubbornness and iconoclastic eccentricities. Even when I ‘get it’ I can be resistant to sticking to the recipe or just plain forget what I know at precisely the wrong moment.

As I finished writing that last paragraph, in fact, I realized that I’ve been using my little notebook back-to-front and can’t remember why I started using it ‘in reverse’ in the first place.

The great thing about being and upside-down and inside-out sort of person is that most of us outlier sorts manage to muddle through anyhow. There’s a reminder in all of our strangely variant approaches that life offers us more options than we often think to use. Sometimes the sidelong slide into a task proves to lead through unexpectedly wonderful byways or to an unpredictably elegant end.

Falling headlong into life, it seems, is sometimes a happy and wholesome thing.