Personality Quirks

Well, I am so delighted to discover that the feeling I've had for most of my life, that 'alien other' thing, is related to a personality type!  Apparently we INFJ types are only 1-4% of the population, depending on which expert is expounding on the topic.  Whew, saves me from therapy costs.  The reason I feel out of kilter with others most of the time is simply because I AM out of kilter with others.  For years I have jokingly said that not only am I marching to a different drummer, but that drummer is in another band entirely and may even be on another field, coming to a  town near you...

I'm also feeling another load lifting; the load of  self disappointment and personal failure from having suffered writing-interruptus disease.  I wrote another blog for a short time and then I just quit. Part of that was due to the actual grief of my husband's death catching up with me and sitting smack on me. Depression has never been an acknowledged part of my internal make up. In fact, it took others pointing it out to me, so unfamiliar was the experience. I've actually been called 'Pollyanna' or 'the Eternal Optimist' by friends and family. There are worse name-calling experiences out there, so I'll keep these.

The other part of it was, well, I'm not sure yet. Fear? Lack of time? Procrastination?   I'm still working through this in my head (that's the place INTJ's spend the majority of our time anyway.)   Whatever it is or was, I accept that I stopped and started, then just stopped.  I accept that it may happen again  in the future.  It is difficult at times to both narrate life and to live it as well.  Sometimes the living gets in the way of the narrating.  The interesting thing is that I also stopped writing in my personal journals.  Hah!  Surprised are you, that one is writing for the world and also writing for self?  I'm not sure if other INTJ's maintain the constant conversations in their heads or not, but I have to write mine down to lower the level of noise banging around in there. Many days I probably would wear a "tilt" sign on my head were I a pinball machine instead of a person.

There is another burden that I am working through at this time, and that is yet another death.  The death of the dream of Sunflower Solace Farm.  Admittedly, it was a super-sized dream that I fully intended to manage in a bite-sized fashion, over years of time. The farm dream was long in the  mindscape in my head.  But the trigger, the sudden unexpected death of my husband and the mental inability to remain in the home where he died shot me out into the next stage of the dream very prematurely. So while my logical brain understands that decisions made under extreme circumstances will often fail, the striving emotional part of me is really struggling to come to grips with walking away from the place where my soul found solace, beauty and strength after the pain.


And then to top it off, there is the whole issue of learning to live with the pain of loss and the acceptance that it has changed who I am and how I perceive myself, as well as how I interact with others. I need some flux to weld the two forms of my life together so that I can continue to move forward.


Be well all.


~Sheket