If “weird” has a feeling, it is at once energizing and maddening, like trying to squeeze into a space where you might plausibly fit, but don’t quite. (In fact, weird people are sometimes literally told they are not a “good fit.”) Being weird feels like showing up alone to a party where you only know the host, except the host is in the bathroom, and Oh God, are you even in the right house? Except the party is your life.

You might know what it’s like to be considered weird if you have few friends, or if you have an unusual hobby or lifestyle, or if you struggle socially. Or, you might be otherwise well-adjusted but are one of the few people of your ethnicity or gender or physical appearance doing whatever it is you do or living wherever it is you live. Sometimes, weirdness hinges on identity: women who have little interest in caring for children are considered strange by society, but so are men who do enjoy childcare—in fact, we’ll meet one such man soon.

This book is for those who have spent their lives feeling different, as well as for those who only feel different by dint of circumstance—perhaps because of a job or move. Maybe you attribute your personal or professional struggles to this difference, and the fact that you didn’t choose to be different makes them all the more hurtful. As the psychologist Sharon Lamb, who grew up poor, wrote after she didn’t get tenure, “That year of job hunting consolidated my suspicion that my upbringing in apartment buildings and playing in back alleys and empty lots meant that I would never be able to have a foundation among old stone buildings and those phony ‘traditions.’”1 When you’re locked outside something, it’s hard to know whether it’s because of something about you.

Weirdness affects us all, in one way or another. Maybe you aren’t weird, or at least not at the moment. Maybe you simply live with social anxiety or impostor syndrome—two of the common side effects of weirdness that can gnaw at the psyche for no particular reason. Maybe you are trying to understand why your neighborhood, school, office, or social circle is so homogenous, or why so many people are uncomfortable living alongside people who are different. What is it about unusual people and ideas that makes us so uneasy? And why do so many free-thinking adults all end up living in very similar ways?

Or perhaps you’re in charge, trying to help a diverse team of individuals do their best work. You hope to use their distinctiveness to fuel success, like many of the people I’ve interviewed for this book have done. Or maybe you’re just trying to spur the team you’re a part of to come up with the best, most creative solutions possible. Weirdness might be an asset, in that case.