 "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
themullet: I've dumbed myself down before, to the point where people didn't notice I was smart. Was nice going under the radar. Tried for a while to knock down my intelligence with heavy amounts of drug and alcohol abuse, reading crap and not remotely pushing myself.I developed a crazy hippy persona which allowed me to talk about crazy topics and get away with it. Was regular on the rave scene getting the nickname of the raving hippy.When I'm out I won't talk about computers at all (the first rule of computer club is you don't talk about computer club), if someone asks me what I do I'll give a very general response. I often find myself talking about stuff I saw on ted.com or fringe science or other crazy ideas. I actively avoid the normal topics and try to switch the topic to something more interesting.I like to be a social chameleon, bantering well with lots of different people.I'm lucky with my friends and house mates, I live with A.I. programmer, a dude with a photographic memory and a fitness instructor, it's a nice balance. Friends wise know a lot of good people from my uni days who like to snowboard and/or travel and are also rather smart.Though despite being able to hold my own socially, I'm happiest when sat at my desk, pissing around with pcs, code and learning crazy stuff from the net. I've also stopped dumbing myself down now and I'm working on creating the best version of myself that I can.Guess in your situ would be tempted by a work break for 6months - 1 year. Go find your place in the world =]Sorry bit of a ramble =]