T · Tackle the Topic
Strip away emotional noise and state the core subject directly without indirect hinting.
Who the hell do you think you are?
I’m a Neurosparkler. Maybe you are too.
Smart, quirky Gen X women with spiky cognitive profiles have spent decades explaining who the hell we think we are — only to discover that the question was rhetorical.
The Neurosparkle Newsletter: Critical Thinking for Bird Brains
One Just Right Word every week for Neurosparklers and the Nearlynormies who love us.
Why Bird Brains
Every Bird Brain has a different architecture. None has a lesser one.
You’ve spent your whole life translating yourself for everyone else. And they still can’t understand you.
The Quadruple Empathy Problem
One mind is expected to translate its way of being for all the other birds. The other birds are never expected to translate theirs.
The Neurosparkle Newsletter is a room where your native language is already spoken fluently.
I wrote a book from the perspective of one particular hummingbird. Her message to the other birds is simple: “Please tell me what I cannot see, what you think I can do better. But don’t forget that every bird is made of a different feather.” That’s the whole message of my book, in 32 pages.
The Bird Brains
Every issue looks at one Just Right Word with four questions
Read one. Read all four. You choose how deep you go.
Epistemic Eagle · What Is?
What do we know, and how do we know it?
Epistemic (ep·i·STEM·ik): about knowing. How we know what we know.
Percipient Parrot · What If?
What might another perspective reveal?
Percipient (per·SIP·ee·ent): perceptive. Able to notice what others miss.
Ontological Owl · What Now?
What is the nature of what we’re trying to understand?
Ontological (on·tuh·LOJ·i·kul): about being. What a thing actually is.
Heuristic Hummingbird · What Next?
What can we try next, and what might we learn?
Heuristic (hyoo·RIS·tik): finding out by doing. Take the smallest next step, then learn from what happens.
The Just Right Words to explain how you are built
STIQS, not Symptoms.
Learn to Think Differently about Thinking Differently
Typical neurodivergence language focuses on diagnostic symptoms, traits, idiosyncrasies, and quirks as a means for identifying what is wrong with us.
But for unconventional high achievers, those same descriptors are what make us brilliant when we are allowed to optimize for our own operating system.
STIQS rethinks the words we use to understand what makes Neurosparklers and Nearlynormies different without pathologizing or diagnosing each other.
S
Strengths
What you do effortlessly that exhausts everyone else. Not your résumé strengths. Your cognitive architecture.
T
Temperament
The operating temperature of your nervous system. Why some environments are fuel and others are friction.
I
Intellect
The speed and shape of your thinking. That was never a deficit in attention. It is a difference in processing.
Q
Quirks
The features that were called flaws. The things you apologized for before you had the Just Right Words for what they actually are.
S
Story
The narrative you’ve been living inside. We don’t just name what you are. We help you see how you got here, and choose where you go next.
The solution isn’t asking one bird to translate harder. It’s giving every bird the same four questions.
Actionable communication
The TRIP Protocol
A communication system for Critical Thinking and Recursive Reasoning.
Choose a letter. Explore the practice.
Revisit any question as understanding changes.
Read all four practices
R · Resolve the Referent
Verify both parties are defining words and expectations the exact same way.
I · Interrogate Inklings
Test assumptions before reacting. Question what is factual vs. what is projection.
P · Practice Pragmatic Positivity
Focus on actionable solutions rather than getting stuck in perpetual analysis loops.
Why this matters
You already know what it costs.
Those comments are the price of translating yourself for everyone else. TRIP shows you which conundrums are problems to solve and which are differences to understand, in your own head and across the table. So you spend less of yourself on being understood, and more on building the life you want, starting now.
What lands in your inbox
The Just Right Word of the Week
- One Just Right Word from Four Perspectives
- The Just Right Words behind this week’s Just Right Word
- A Say Uncle short atomic essay, if you prefer the quick read
- My deeper dive, if you choose to go down the rabbit hole
- Gestalt of the Week, because someone said it better than me
- The Rabbit Hole Roadmap, one call to action you can put in place this week
Four posts to read first
