For much of my life, I knew that I did not learn or reason most effectively through a fixed linear sequence. I often struggled to move step by step through a subject when I could not yet see the larger system surrounding it. Before I could examine a narrow question, I needed to understand the broader landscape: its boundaries, relationships, recurring patterns, and levels of interaction.

This made some forms of learning genuinely difficult. It could take me longer to enter a subject because I was trying to understand where each idea belonged before focusing on the idea itself. At the same time, I often noticed parallels among complex concepts that appeared unrelated when considered in isolation. I could see relationships before I necessarily had the language to explain them.

I began to understand this way of thinking more clearly when I encountered complexity science and became a student of Yaneer Bar-Yam through the New England Complex Systems Institute. Through that work, I found a formal vocabulary for something I had experienced intuitively for years. Complexity science showed me how patterns can emerge through interactions, how behavior changes across scales, and why a system cannot always be understood by separating it into individual parts.

It also helped me understand why conventional linear approaches had often felt incomplete. My instinct was to map the system first, trace the relationships within it, and then move toward a smaller area of inquiry. What had sometimes appeared to be intellectual disorganization was, in part, an effort to establish context before specialization.

Recognizing my neurodivergence later in adulthood deepened that understanding. It did not erase the challenges I experience with linear organization, sequencing, or narrowing my attention. Instead, it helped me see those challenges alongside a strong orientation toward patterns, parallels, networks, and relationships across domains. This way of thinking shapes both my research interests and the construction of this website.