Even to a lesser degree of dysfunction, gifted kids often find that they can do reasonably well at a wide array of activities. If you're instantly competent at 10% of everything you try, you quickly have more than enough things to keep you busy, engaged, and interesting at parties. Why would you suffer through anything else?

Which is one of the reasons I studied the board game Go for almost 4 years after I lost all hope of ever being good at it. At the time it was one of the few things I did despite being just good enough to teach complete beginners, but never any better.

The guy I was learning from was a really good teacher and was charitably amused by my lack of progress. I knew I was never going to find a gentler way to fail and be okay with it.