The One Where I Realize Genius Has Different Shapes

Was watching Young Sheldon and got stuck on this thought: if someone like Sheldon can exist — someone obviously, conventionally smart in the school-smart way — then every other kind of person must have some version of that too. Their own version of genius. And it's probably nothing like Sheldon.

I went off in MBTI terms because that's how my brain works. A super high-IQ ESTP probably wouldn't be brilliant in a textbook way — more like a Trump, instinctive and tactical and good at the cameras. A super successful ESFJ might look more like Taylor Swift — relational, strategic, loyal to her audience, turning personal feeling into something everyone shares. An ISFP could build an empire through taste. An ENTJ through command. None of them would look like Sheldon. None of them are supposed to.

And then I thought — maybe my kind, INFJ, has a shape too. And maybe it doesn't have to be the obvious "deep guy" version. Maybe the depth can actually become a thing. A product. A design. A world someone plays.

That brought me back to Ice Age Life.

I keep feeling behind on it. But I only really started in late March, which means I've been at this just over a month. A two-month ship window isn't actually bad for a solo person making something this weird. And if June ends up being the month where I keep improving it after launch, then it becomes a three-month art piece. Which is just the shape of making something real.

I think this might be my first actual art piece. Renaissance artists didn't finish big work overnight either. There are drafts, awkward phases, layers. That's how a big thing gets made.

I've also been thinking about what comes after. Maybe a trilogy eventually — Ice Age Life, then College Life, then maybe Time Travel Life down the line, which would be the perfect fusion of my style, my history obsession, and my thing for alternate paths. Survival, identity, destiny. Something like that. I don't want to over-design it, but I like that it has a rough shape in my head now.

Real life under all of this: if unemployment ends around mid-May and my apps are making some money, maybe it's okay to keep going without a full-time job for a while. But only if I treat it seriously. Not as drifting. As a real 90-day indie studio trial.

That framing helps. I'm not unemployed and floating. I'm just seeing if my creative brain can actually turn into something other people can hold.