Personality Types-Does it Matter?

 I have had an all=encompassing slight obsession with Myers-Briggs testing and similar tests for years. The first test I heard about was an archetypal type with three tiers. Honestly, it was part of a group my first husband found online with bulletin boards or chats or something. This was twenty years ago and all very vague now. It wasn't hard to see which types were considered best and to quickly adjust an answer or to in order to get that result.

Incidently, I just took this test, The Jungian Archetype Test, and both my self and persona results came out as The Hero, which is "Strong and perseverant with boundless ambition." Okie-Dokie!

Anyway, in the early years of testing, I was in college and excited about all the new ideas in the world. Making a difference and using my brain to do something amazing. Learning and big ideas. Back then I usually tested as an INFP or INTP,  with an occasional ENFP. I think most can agree, I am not extraverted. Most people bore me to tears. The right people raise my energy, but not just anyone can do that. I do not say that with an air of superiority. The most fascinating people are people who find the gem within others and find the OTHERS fascinating. I acknowledge other people may bore me because *I* am boring.

I always assumed I could not be the dreaded ISFJ because, well that is the mom of the group-the boring and mundane with a splash of mushy emotion. Also an ISFJ would have a neat and tidy house right? She'd pack amazing lunches and sit and think about what is best for her family all the time. And she wouldn't like impromptu road trips at the last minute. Nope, I am much cooler and spontaneous than that, right?

However, upon further thought, I think I may very well be that dull person. I am obviously introverted. I have been known to go in the other room at my own gatherings, just for some peace. Sensing over intuition is the hard one. Anyone familiar with MBTI knows that intuitives think they are some sort of Gods who have won the game of life and are brimming with extraordinariness. But truthfully- there is a fine line between infp and infj, in that they are both considered "super-feelers." Our first natural reaction is to think about how we feel about the situation unfolding. This leads to problems, especially at work, where thinking about your personal feelings about something can come across as a little immature. Well, thinking about it is fine, I guess. But talking about it and acting on it, not so much. As a sincere personality, however, it can be hard to hide those feelings behind indifference or white lies. Although-I have been known to say stupid lies, like totally opposite of what I wanted when scared and wanting to hide (telling my high school crush I didn't want kids-of course I did, pretending I didn't like history to another guy even though it has always been one of my favorite subjects and I went into MSU AS a history major-I am just really stupid with guys and say dumb things). And finally the P versus J. I always thought I was P and spontaneous. Struggling to keep house is hard for me. However...I think I might be J. I am never late if it is up to me (or if anxiety isn't forcing me to choose to be late-like the saying stupid things, anxiety in a work or social situation can push me into self-destructive behaviors). I WANT a clean house. I would NOT feel the least bit upset if I cleaned for an hour or two a day to get that clean house, however, I can't seem to make myself do that. Whether it is a touch of ADHD or just lack of structured training in how to keep house, I just struggle with it. Well, and the fact that you do something...and have to do it again and again. It makes

Happy Days... reading Gabby Berstein's new book

 I know it has been awhile since I have written on this platform. I felt as if my desire for growth was being pushed down. I was just hanging on for long while. 

I have started reading Gabby Berstein's new book, Happy Days. My first thought when I read about the book was, "Oh, I don't need that book. That's for people with real trauma." Reading it, though, I am aware that trauma isn't always a big one time event. It can be a series of things that make us feel unsafe or not in control of our bodies. And when put that way, there has been a lot of trauma. 

So I am reading through that and doing the writings. I am not expecting a huge light bulb moment, Like, "Aha! This event is why I am the way I am." But I have been thinking a lot of and a lot of "I wonder why" moments are coming up.

Now Gabby herself discusses a lot of therapy that sounds a bit woowoo to me. If she has the money and inclination for it, good for her, but I want something a little earthier and preferably one I can do myself. However, I was thinking maybe there is healing in saying things out loud, so next time I have some time alone at home, I will do that.

The Books

 Another Easter is in the books. From the magical hopefulness of a childhood Easter imbued with joy and excitement to the anticipation of a Easter as a young parent to whatever it is I am now. 

It's been a dreary day. I can take a little dreariness sometimes. But there are days when I just WANT the sun to shine. There is a coolness in the air, and after running around outside for 30 minutes or so, Liam ran in with a nasty case of hives. He is allergic to cold air, although it is also spring and pollen exists in the world. So, he's been dosed with Benadryl, and I sit looking out my window. The screen is patched. I try to look past the imperfections to my neighbors purple flowering trees. I desperately want some lilac bushes and a couple dwarf apple trees. I never got them in when Karl was here, and now I face having to do it myself. Shudder. Not this year. 

I guess this is the first year I have been alone at Easter. Of course my kids are here. I know I should have made an effort. I should have invited people, but honestly, I have trouble rallying when my pocketbook is empty. We did have an AMAZING chuck roast. Since Karl moved out over a year ago, we haven't really enjoyed much roast or steak, so it was a great treat. I broke the rest up and made barbeque beef, but I made the crazy decision to start eating Keto last night, so I can't have the barbeque sauce. Taryn dropped by to see the boys,  which was nice, but she is a vegetarian, so there wasn't much point invited her to our one pot meat and vegetable meal. 

So I am feeling down. This is evident. My confidence is meh, my excitement is nonexistent. But...I've lived long enough to know I don't have to take the road to despair. I just need to sit tight and let the wave wash over me, which it will, and the sun will come out tomorrow. Maybe not literally tomorrow, but you know. It looks as if the end of the week will warm up, which is what I really need. Just some warm air on my skin and a hint of sunshine on my face.

In the Face of Change

Photo by Rory Hennessey on Unsplash

 I stand on the edge of a cliff-the Cliffs of Moher lie before me-but this time, swirling gray fogs clogs the  foreground. It's just grayness and cliffs beyond unseen.

Truthfully, I am a bit apprehensive about next year. I am leaving my current workplace for another. I feel as if I have been an utter failure at my own job. While students tell me they will miss me, students are fickle, and next year will warm up to their new teacher by telling them how much better they are than me. And that is right. They need to move forward.

All I know is that every adult I know that I am not related to will soon be absent from my life. And that is a scary feeling. It is one thing to change jobs when you have a partner, it is quite another to change when your evenings are already spent alone. Now I will lose the only people I ever talk to. Of course, there will be other people, and hopefully among them a warm spirit or two. 

My coffee turned out exceptionally weak today, and that is after I pushed the "strong brew" button. I wonder if this has a deeper meaning. Perhaps it is a sign of my weak, faltering spirit. I kid. Sort of. The truth is, I feel very fragile right now, and I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, and there is nothing to do but move forward.

BUT! In the face of change there is the one realization that is always helpful. WE get to choose what we dwell on. We get to choose what we think about. And I simply have to choose not to dwell on my feelings. There is a certain comfort in picking apart my feelings and understanding them, but there is also a destructive element of painful despair when helplessness against fears overwhelm. I can choose to keep pushing forward and turn my back to the clouds. I can choose to search for the sun.

And so I will.

Being without a partner makes me long for a partner. I don't understand it. For the most part I love having my own bed and my own room. I love making my own plans and having no adult to question me if we have a cake for dinner. And yet, this yearning to connect, to feel loved, to make someone smile is always present. Is it just social conditioning? Or is there more to it? It is just a hard world and having someone to share the burden, to tell me the sweet things one needs to hear at the end of a long day, to cook with me, and strive towards healthier living together, to make plans with... those are good things. But then...they are there. They notice when you skip doing dishes, when ice cream give you clear-the-room gas, when you just want to sit down and enjoy a bowl of brownie batter. With people comes judgement and having to be a little bit better than you are. 

The future is uncertain, and I don't know if I will ever be loved, but there is not shame in the hope, right? So why does it feel shameful to admit? Curious. 

I had intended this blog, A Mighty Queen, to be about striving to become better and achieve more, and I feel as if I am letting my readers down. I ordered a book on life planning and life goals and it is SO hard for me to fill out. Because what I want is a good life, with lots of travel, a beautiful romance, and a lot of quiet time to relax at home on rainy days. How do you break that down into serious goals?

I guess step-by-step. I can plan a trip. Maybe not this year, but in two years, (if I don't do anything dumb) my credit cards will be paid off and I will have more money to play with. 

I could make myself more attractive, which in our society means thinner,  which sadly means less brownie batter. In truth, I always wanted a physically active life. I just don't know how to do it with kids. Even hiking about kills Gabriel who is afraid of heights and thus has built hiking into this huge fear of standing on a mountaintop (he literally is afraid of Colorado). But the kids are getting older, and soon, I will be able to leave them for longer and longer and do my own thing. 

So, maybe the answer is to accept the fog. To let it swirl around me, mysterious and opaque, because in truth, the unexpected was exactly what I wanted. I didn't want my future to be one place with the same title and same building and same people. I wanted something different. I neeed to remain cognizant of that and step-by-step, I need to light my own candle. I need to make a short-term plan and a long-term plan to focus my attention on. I need to let go of the sadness of my failures (noone is really going to miss me) and examine what I can do differently (focus less on my feelings and more on theirs, maybe? I don't know, you tell me, what am I doing wrong?), and take that forward with me. I need to accept the disappointments (and there have been many) and use them as the driving force for change. 

Foggy mornings have always been my favorite. I will remember that, as I step forward. And if I fall, the crashing sea of life is an amazing place to land. 

Change-Facing the Realities of Life with Dignity

 Change is inevitable. As soon as everything has a place and the weather is fair, it seems as if we are blown off course. Sometimes this is of our own doing, but often it is imposed on us from without. Maintaining grace and dignity during times of unwanted change can be difficult. There is that book, Who Moved My Cheese?, which highlights how one might approach unwanted change. You can rant and rail or you can accept. 

We all have different tolerance levels for change. Some people want things to remain the same, whereas others enjoy self-initiated change. Then there are those individuals who believe they have a vision and want to make change happen. I am a mix of the first two. I don't need to really be a mover and shaker. I don't enjoy making decisions,  or telling others what to do (and thus forcing change upon them), but I am not too fond of having to live out others' idea of the way things should be. I just want to do my thing.

The hardest thing about my current job is the change from year to year. Although it has remained fairly stable  (once I got out of most of those coteaching classes by being the WORST coteacher ever - in all fairness, I had no idea how to coteach and assumed the teacher didn't want me there any more than I wanted to be there. I realize now, I missed out on the opportunity for some good companionship), there is always the chance that someone else will talk their way into my classes or I will get stuck in a random coteaching class with someone I am not interested in getting to know. It stresses me out EVERY SINGLE spring, wondering what the next year will look like, because I really care about how my day shapes up. Whereas I played with the idea of being someone who can make that choice, it was really just play. There are just so many details I don't care about, don't want to care about, and thoughts I would rather allocate my brain cells to than caring about things I really don't think make a difference. We all want our lives to matter, and I would hate pretending to care just for prestige and more control of my day. I want my life to matter, and chasing someone else's dream is not the key to that (I do tend to get very excited about other people's dreams and try them on for awhile). 

So I have a new job coming up next year. I would like to say that this was a conscious choice, but it has really been about running away from discomfort of the forced changes. I would rather CHOOSE to change than have it forced upon me. This is just the first year I have been hired. And part of me is like, what are you doing girl? You like what you do. I like my classes, I enjoy the shallow work acquaintances and Howdy Hos! in the hall. I like starting early and my day ending soon. I like the respect one gets a teacher at a high school as compared to lower levels.  But...the way everything fell into place-the feeling in my gut that this job was mine- this is a sign, I believe. Oh the strong, resolute thinkers will say there are no signs. You just go out and get what you want. But...they are wrong, naturally. When things fall into place with little effort, pushing and planning-that is a sign. 

But I am scared. I am not sure what I am going into. I am not sure what my day will look like. I am not sure how much time I will be coteaching, as I didn't even think to ask. I don't know who my co-teachers will be or how the administration will behave. I am searching for buddies and after-work friends, and going into a smaller a pool-a pool where many young teachers start as they wait for that high school job) may not be the key to finding friends. 

Goal Setting: Why it Doesn't Work for Me

 

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Becoming a Person of Goals

For the past several years, I have been pushing myself towards becoming a person of goals. A person with a to-do list done, checked boxes and self-horn tooting included. I have been reading books on being more successful and more corporate (as a woman somehow you have to magically balance warmth with seriousness-good luck), how to check progress and get ever closer to being a successful person. However, I always find myself slipping up, falling back, gaining and losing the same 15 pounds. I get bored behaving at work, and just want to let my silly side show. I have personal issues which continue to interfere with my relationships with others (Queen of throwing people off track by not letting them know what I really think? Check!). And I just find myself wondering-am I trying to fit myself into the Western mode of being a workaholic drone without really considering what it is I want out of life?

Long ago--perhaps in my late teens or early 20s, I decided it was just enough to BE. I just wanted to exist, enjoy my kids, revel in the early dawn hours, and live the simple life. Circumstances however, later dictated that I must GO OUT AND EARN A LIVING, and that has really thrown off all that I ever tried to be. Somehow I had to balance being a mature grown up with my desire to go lie on my bed and fantasize about a favorite fictional character. I had to try and convince people I was worthy and intelligent, when my way of relating to people outside the home is through silliness and trying to make them laugh. Perhaps we all want that. I have no desire to tell others what do or control them. However, I sure as heck don't want them telling me what to do. Isn't shared space enough? Anyway, I have come to the realization that maybe I am dumb. Not school dumb. I am an underachiever in school, but I have taken enough college courses to at least know how  stack up with other people at the distinguished "elite" Missouri State University.;oP. I have learned to accept that my ideas are as good as others, it just takes a whole long time for me to dig through the muck of feelings and impressions and half-formed thoughts, and by then, everyone has moved on. Whatever. I am slow. There is a surety in slow-thinking (not to be confused with decision-making-which requires a certain unwillingness to reconsider discarded options-something I am still working on). Actually I think the healthier I become, the less I think overall, and the more I just exist. And the truth is, it doesn't really matter. 

Ticket to nowhere?

My career is going nowhere. In fact, it can't really be called a career. It is a job. There is nowhere to move up and on. I have no desire to make decisions for other able-bodied adults, nor do I wish to labor intensely enough to perfect my paperwork to the point of moving "up." Is sitting at a desk correcting IEP paperwork really moving "up?" Nope. And that's fine. I enjoy connecting with kids most days. I want to help them do better and try harder. But let's not call it a career. 

In an ideal world, my words would be amazing enough that people would desire to read them-would wade through ads to read them and I could make a living that way. Or if I must, I would have braved the counseling degree so I could become a career counselor. I used to memorize the college course books and all the paths and the classwork and internships which would take people "somewhere." That would have been a good path. But it required a 2 year degree in counseling, I just felt the counseling admissions would look in my eyes, see my brokenness, and stamp a big red NOPE with a red box (for emphasis, of course) around it on top. 

Of course, there is always becoming an astronaut. Why do we allow kids to think they actually have such options. Why aren't we honest and say, "Hey, that's for the 140+ IQ elites, who probably have connections, and can handle military training (I just can't do push ups)." Why do we pretend kids can have amazing lives, when most of us are just going to have jobs. No, I said that wrong. We can have amazing LIVES. We just can't all have amazing careers. And the truth is, I don't have a burning desire for answers. I just want to experience space. I am much less deep than I like to pretend.

Let's Focus, Please

So I am getting off track. Goals. I have been thinking about how setting goals doesn't work for me. I mean, I used to set goals with the praxis tests. I will get X teaching certification. I'd pay the fee, take the test, add on the certification until one day I realized--I was just reliving the test prep anxiety the years and years of schooling had engrained into my skin. I had just become accustomed to that anxious feeling of proving myself, proving myself, feeling good, and then ... nothing. Nothing comes of it. I was just stuck in the pattern of schoolthink. I guess I am doing the same things with those Wordle games. Just proving to myself I have a brain cell or two banging around in there. What do you get when two brain cells bang? A synapse. Ahahahaha.

And now I am thinking, what if I just want to come home wrap in a blanket, sip a cup of hot tea (LOLOL, y'all know it's coffee), and stare at the everchanging cloud formations in the western sky. Does that make me less than? 

What's Happening Now? Why?

Am I finally getting over the middle-aged hump and returning to my Zen roots? Is this just some excerpt from a near-death-experience book rearing its head inside my head (I love that stuff). I read an interesting article on the Forbes website, by Jennifer Cohen, The Most Successful People Don't Set Goals. In this article, it was suggested that rather than setting goals, it might be more prudent and effective to set intentions. And I love that thought. I can't lose a pound today, but I can set the intention of eating healthily. I can't change the world or turn a student's life around, or suddenly start liking someone I am secretly hoping will be swallowed by a hole in the ground (sorry, it's the devil inside that makes me think such things), but I can set the intention of being more present, or making someone feel valued, or looking for the good in the person who really needs to be swallowed (come on, Mother Earth, do your thing!).

And the amazing thing about intentions is they can easily change. Today I intend to eat healthy, tomorrow I intend to live life fully. They can be short-term or long term. They are easy ways to become your better self without a checklist and time limit. And I love that. 

So Anyway

I had much more to say, but I feel a cold trying to get under my skin and my body at the breaking point. I am tired. The kids are staying with their big sister in an hour and as much as I desire to get out (Barnes and Noble and Renaissance books), I also strongly desire to take my two little single serving Cabernets and curl up with a comfort movie ( I have been craving rewatching Sherlock-I JohnLock SO HARD, but I would have to pay now that it is off Netflix-gross), and just going to sleep early.

We shall see. My intention was to say something with depth and clarity-well, there is always tomorrow.

Started my journal

 I only have a minute. I was just excited as I started my slam journal today and wanted to share. U am using the mass book, which was given to me on my trip to Ireland.

This is all I have time for!