THE WALL...

Q.) What is the “wall” that I keep talking about?

With any task, there is the potential to hit a “wall”. With any difficult task, there shall definitely be a “wall”. It all boils down to “difficulty” vs. “desire”. The wall is the point at which the desire to complete a task is overtaken by the difficulty of completing that task. All Late Bloomers hate this wall. When a Late Bloomer sees the wall, a task that seemed interesting, or even fun at one point, becomes something that will require more effort than he is willing to put out.

Not all Late Bloomers hit the wall at the same point. Given the same task to two Late Bloomers, one may hit the wall before the other.

Example: Let’s say the task is to learn to draw. The method chosen to start this adventure is to read book recommended by a friend who is an artist and has obviously benefited from this book called “Learn to Draw”. Both of the Late Bloomers will go full speed ahead to learn to draw because this is something they find fun and interesting, (or at the very least, he could use the skills to advance his career). The first Late Bloomer starts to
get the concept of angles and lines. He even begins to draw things that look like they could be something. But then he comes to the chapter on shading. It is a concept that is not easily grasped, at least not by him. After a few attempts, the enthusiasm wanes. The time and effort put in become less and less until neither time nor effort exist. He has hit the wall. The second Late Bloomer made it past shading but found that the concept of color charts and color coordination were not easy to understand. And he, too, hits the wall. In both cases, the Late Bloomers learned some basics that would qualify as "just enough to get by" but not qualify as proficient. (In case you didn’t know, this is a personal example.)

Understand this: the wall doesn’t stop a Late Bloomer early on in a task every time. It stops a him at any point prior to the task’s completion, be it a book, a project, a hobby, an advancement, or whatever. And as a result, a Late Bloomer will end up knowing a little bit about many things, rarely becoming excellent at anything.

If the character was built to plow through the wall during the formative childhood years, using whatever motivator was available, the Late Bloomer would not be a Late Bloomer. He would be a confident, tenacious, persistent early bloomer.

Next up…THE LATE BLOOMERS’ EDUCATION.