The yearly birthday ruminations
Jul. 16th, 2016 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseRecently a friend told me how she took the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory for the first time in years, and rather than wanting to argue with all of the questions, she breezed through it relatively quickly and found the result helpful rather than aggravating; she attributed this to being older and knowing herself better. I tried something similar this morning, and discovered it was easier for me as well; what was interesting, though, was all the times I had to stop and think about whether I was answering a particular way out of habit, or because I actually functioned that way now. Growing up I was a dedicated improviser, but after some bad experiences screwing up work and social things I learned to carefully keep my schedule and projects organized. And yet I was still surprised at how differently I answered the planning- and organization-based questions, compared to the last time I took the test as a teenager. Similarly, in the questions about external vs. internal attention, I realized that I put much more focus on other people and the outside world than I used to, instead of spending most of my time inside my head.
As a result, instead of the ENFP that I used to firmly roll, the latest test I took pegged me as an ESFJ. I was especially entertained that the description on the website I used congratulated me on my social perception and compared me to a cheerleader or quarterback; if you had asked 18-year-old me to pick a self-descriptor, "socially aware" would have been one of the last items on the list. But at the same time, I've made a distinct effort to grow that part of my personality, because I got tired of being blindsided by people's shifting moods and alliances. (I'm still blindsided on occasion - human beings are complicated! - but I feel like I have a much better grounding in how we all interact than I used to.)
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I feel like the skills I've developed in the past several years are valuable, and I'm glad I have them. On the other...sometimes I miss the more imaginative, more self-reflective me. It's gotten noticeably harder for me to write introspective blog posts lately, and I can't tell if that's because the self-examination part has gotten tougher, or because my life is so much fuller lately that it's tough to find the time. I spend less time reading and writing, less time thinking about the world as it could be and more figuring out how to deal with the world as it is. Again, I don't think this is necessarily negative, but I'm concerned about going too far in this direction. Scary global events and news stories used to bother me a lot less; now that I'm more invested in the here-and-now, it's difficult not to feel concerned and helpless.
I suppose there's nothing stopping me from refocusing on creativity and idealism; doing so isn't going to mean that I automatically lose all the organizational and social intelligence I've cultivated. But it feels like that's tougher to do. I want to say it's because it's a more abstract focus and I'm not sure how to go about it; to a degree, I think that's what I've been telling myself my entire life. But now that I really think about it, I suspect the focus on practical matters has been at least partially a coping mechanism; a way to keep myself safe from rejection and failure. Which would explain why it's so difficult to imagine letting go of it. And makes the whole "news stories make me feel more helpless now" part more than a bit ironic. No system is without its dangers, it seems.
As a result, instead of the ENFP that I used to firmly roll, the latest test I took pegged me as an ESFJ. I was especially entertained that the description on the website I used congratulated me on my social perception and compared me to a cheerleader or quarterback; if you had asked 18-year-old me to pick a self-descriptor, "socially aware" would have been one of the last items on the list. But at the same time, I've made a distinct effort to grow that part of my personality, because I got tired of being blindsided by people's shifting moods and alliances. (I'm still blindsided on occasion - human beings are complicated! - but I feel like I have a much better grounding in how we all interact than I used to.)
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I feel like the skills I've developed in the past several years are valuable, and I'm glad I have them. On the other...sometimes I miss the more imaginative, more self-reflective me. It's gotten noticeably harder for me to write introspective blog posts lately, and I can't tell if that's because the self-examination part has gotten tougher, or because my life is so much fuller lately that it's tough to find the time. I spend less time reading and writing, less time thinking about the world as it could be and more figuring out how to deal with the world as it is. Again, I don't think this is necessarily negative, but I'm concerned about going too far in this direction. Scary global events and news stories used to bother me a lot less; now that I'm more invested in the here-and-now, it's difficult not to feel concerned and helpless.
I suppose there's nothing stopping me from refocusing on creativity and idealism; doing so isn't going to mean that I automatically lose all the organizational and social intelligence I've cultivated. But it feels like that's tougher to do. I want to say it's because it's a more abstract focus and I'm not sure how to go about it; to a degree, I think that's what I've been telling myself my entire life. But now that I really think about it, I suspect the focus on practical matters has been at least partially a coping mechanism; a way to keep myself safe from rejection and failure. Which would explain why it's so difficult to imagine letting go of it. And makes the whole "news stories make me feel more helpless now" part more than a bit ironic. No system is without its dangers, it seems.
