Six and now ESFJ

Ironically after taking the Ennigram questionnaire that I posted about, I got signed up at work for a Myers-Briggs workshop and not shockingly the outcome was similar. Loyal, organized, outgoing ...

I was an ESFJ:

ESFJ
Warmhearted, conscientious, and cooperative. Want harmony in their environment, work with determination to establish it.  Like to work with others to complete tasks accurately and on time.  Loyal, follow through even in small matters.  Notice what others need in their day-by-day lives and try to provide it.  Want to be appreciated for who they are and for what they contribute.

None of these type indicator tests are set in stone but they do help in heightening awareness for me. The challenge that exists is that lately I want to be more introverted.  I want to work more independently and be responsible for me and my work, rather than leading teams and being responsible for the work, schedule, and deliverables of others.  Finding the right balance between who I am and what I want to do is the challenge.Another thought I had is that perhaps I really do like my role of Project Manager but don't really like the technology part of the projects I manage.  Maybe the balance would be to use my skills in a different area - something in more of a people/helping area.

I have a tendency to go to extremes when I want to make a change.  This time around I want it to be slow, thoughtful, and incremental.  I really do feel that I am heading in the right direction with the grad program that I am starting in the fall.  Expanding my knowledge in a different area, but still allowing my strengths to still work.

More questions than answers but that is OK.  One of the workshop leaders made a comment that I thought was interesting.  She said (and I have heard this somewhere else before) that, "We live the first half of our lives being what we think others want us to be, and then something shifts and we spend the second half of our lives being what we want to be."

The Best Kind of Tired

I am utterly wiped out tonight but it is the best kind of tired ever. Remember when you were a kid and spent the whole day at the beach, in the water almost all day and you came home feeling waterlogged by the water and toasted from being in the sun all day but you were blissfully happy and carefree?

I may not be carefree but I am happily waterlogged by the weather and life this this weekend. It was an amazingly summery weekend with temperatures in the high 80's all weekend. It isn't going to stay this warm, but it was a nice prelude to summer and a notification that we will definitely need the air conditioners as our new home gets all afternoon sun and holds heat like the sand on the beach making it warm well into the evenings.

Saturday was a full day of spending time with my niece. After getting up with her at 6:30 AM and doing all kinds of outside stuff - I was ready for a nap myself when she napped! All in all we made three trips to the playground, one trip to my parents' house, 2 walks in the neighborhood, a trip to Whole Foods (for breakfast yummies) and the nap. It was a great day ...and I was in bed sleeping by 9:30 PM!

Today was more of the same, but also some time with my husband pulling out and spraying down all of the yard furniture and lolling about the yard reading.

Tonight we are having a small birthday party - the dessert type - for my mom! Happy Birthday mom! This week is supposed to be cooler in the 60's except for Tuesday which is supposed to be 92-degrees! Can you say Global Warming causing all of these weird shifts in temperature?!?

Hope your weekend was a great one too!

Six.

My friend SG works in the HR department at my organization. We used to work together back in 1999-2000 at a small management consulting firm and when I when I came in for my interview here was pleasantly surprised to see that she was working here too. Her focus is on career coaching and personal development. She does employee training programs within the organization.

I told her how I was taking a Myers Briggs Type Indicator workshop next Tuesday and she asked if I had ever heard of the Ennegram Type Test. Similar to the Myers Briggs test but more based in spirituality and ancient wisdom traditions than career or business.

I took the free test and sent my results off to her. I was scored closely between being a Two: Helper and a Six: Loyalist. Unlike the Myers Briggs Test, you are not a combination of types rather you are born one type. It does recognize that environment might influence you to tend closely to a second type – which is why I had close scores.

We met for about an hour and she talked me through a bunch of descriptions and questions to help me narrow down and understand the two and ultimately see that I was in fact a stronger Six than a Two. It helped that she and I have worked and socialized together.

I do think that the description is pretty much right on target to who I am. I have summarized it below. The main Ennagram Institute Site has a LOT of information and resources if you want to check it out. I found the largest benefit was being coached through it to really understand the why behind it all and what can learn from it.

Type Six in Brief

The committed, security-oriented type. Sixes are reliable, hard-working, responsible, and trustworthy. Excellent "troubleshooters," they foresee problems and foster cooperation, but can also become defensive, evasive, and anxious—running on stress while complaining about it. They can be cautious and indecisive, but also reactive, defiant and rebellious. They typically have problems with self-doubt and suspicion. At their Best: internally stable and self-reliant, courageously championing themselves and others.

• Basic Fear: Of being without support and guidance
• Basic Desire: To have security and support

Key Motivations: Want to have security, to feel supported by others, to have certitude and reassurance, to test the attitudes of others toward them, to fight against anxiety and insecurity.

Opposites.

Sometimes opposites really do attract. Sometimes it is not just attraction; it is a deeper understanding. Sometimes it’s not understanding at all but just attraction and acceptance. People are complex. Luckily we are complex in good ways as often as we can be complex in bad ways.

Let's take attraction and acceptance first. My husband and I are opposites in as many ways as possible yet we are the same in the one way that matters most; we love each other and we are the best of friends. He is a relaxed laid back, happy go lucky, believe-in the-world person. I on the other hand, am a often (though not always) high-strung (working on this!), often moody, overly analyzing, often chaotic, question everything kind of person. He loves late nights and jam band music. I prefer to be home by 9:00, a country-music loving kind of gal. The ying and yang comparisons can be endless but yet we connect and it works.

I know he does not understand my often idiosyncratic necessity to fret over things, to worry, or to feel the need to (try to) manage everything to the most minute detail. I am sure many times it makes him batty. None the less he accepts it. He does not need to understand they why of it all – most times I don’t understand either – but he accepts me and loves me and that is wonderful.

Then there is understanding.My best friend and I are also opposites, but some how through blog on the internet, we connected. She has many similar characteristics to my husband in fact (only the good ones of course). As opposite as we are we often find ourselves agreeing on some of the deeper more philosophic things – like not feeling “connected” at times. Both of us have an understanding that not being “in” a group is OK but understanding the feeling of connectedness that comes from sharing similarities with others.

When I look at these relationships and other meaningful relationships I realize that most of the people I have connected well with are in fact those people who are not "like" me at all but who instead I have had shared experiences with.

Who do you connect best with?

Roar!

Today started out OK for a Monday, progressed to a nice lunch with a co-worker and ended with me feeling angry.

I am angry at the way things seem to be going at work; that I got yet another certain type of project at work. All I will say is that when I started this job the focus of our department was going in one direction and in the last six months it has gone a different way with different types of projects. Projects that don't hold interest for me. Projects that are different than what I thought I would be working on.

I know with the economy the way it is I am lucky to have a job; I really do feel I am lucky and I have no plans on going anywhere. The people are great and it is great company. I just am feeling frustrated that I am not working on something that is engaging to me.

Coming home I was ended up gnarley about some insurance rate increases that we have. I know it is a a rate hike just like happens to everything pretty much on an annual basis but it can feel like such a rip off at times. Especially when you pay into the insurance and then get seemingly so little back. Ack. Believe it or not I am talking about Pet Insurance for Marley! We paid out $608 for her surgery and we get only $222 back. It hardly makes the $45 a month premium worth it. I think I need to re-asses this one.

I know I don't have much to complain about; I am realizing as I write this out that angry might be too harsh but today I do feel like growling like an angry panda!

*image vinylpulse.com

Perfection in a day

I wish days like this would last forever. It was an absolutely perfect day. Not one, not two, but THREE long walks with Marley and a neighborhood that was alive with spring!

We live less than a block away from a baseball field and playgorund and today was Opening Day for both the Major and Minorkids league teams in town. Wally from Fenway made an appearence signing autogrpahs and taking photos and there were at least thiry bazillion kids playing baseball. Our team in town played a team from Vancouver, Canada. It all started with a parade at noon, and we just finished our last walk with Marley (7:15 pm) and the festivites were just wrapping up.

We made a trip to Home Depot where we got some replacement windows for our basement and I scouted out spring flowers for the front garden. I made a mid-day jaunt to Barnes and Noble and shock of all shocks was able to walk out without making a purchase.

It are days like this that make me feel so alive and happy. I swear the M-F 9-5 hamster wheel of life is so soul sucking compared to days like this! The good news is another weekend comes again in just 5 days!

What did you do today?

Disconnected

Today I went to a birthday lunch with my neighbor across the street and two of her girlfriends. We have been friendly with her and her husband since we moved in and I thought it was nice of her husband to include me in the plans.

As I sat there at lunch and listened to the girls compare "war" stories over pregnancy, labor, delivery and sleep deprivation after their babies were born, I started to to feel a little detached. As the conversation progressed I realized that while I love children I will never be part of that club - the mommy club.

I brushed this feeling off but somehow it morphed into a wondering of who I identify with. If I am not in the new mom club, I am also not in the Child Free by Choice group. While we have chosen not to pursue fertility treatment, NOT having a baby naturally was not a choice we made. I also don't fall into any of the more obvious infertility groups. As an infertile woman who has chosen not to persue aggressive fertility options (egg donor or surrogate would be my choices) I feel I don't really connect with the women who are doing it all to try and conceive. I feel like I fail them. I feel like by their standards I should be "doing it all, anything and everything" to try and get pregnant; why I have not chosen this path is another post in and of itself.

Most days I am OK with where I am, with who I am and with my life as it is has unfolded - most of the time - sometimes, like today - when I am around new babies and new moms I struggle with the emotions that seem to bubble to the surface and seem to make me question things a little more.This time though my questions are more about who I am? What defines me and do I like that definition? I am not sure any of us really have a solid never moving answer to these questions as we all change over time. For me, right now not having an answer that I can easily call upon makes me feel vulnerable in some weird way.

I'm not sure I have a nice tidy wrap up ending for this post. Mostly just my random thoughts from today.

Who do you identify with? What defines you as who you are? Do you like or dislike this definition of yourself?

s.m.o.o.c.h.d.o.g gone p.o.r.n

A long long time ago in a land not so far awayI started a blog and it had the name s.m.o.o.c.h.d.o.g (minus the periods). I inadvertently let the domain registration expire. Today when I went to see if it was still available I discovered it had been taken but was set to expire in October, so I might be able to get it back then.

Out of curiosity I did a search on the URL and sadly found out that it is now a p.o.r.n site out of Afghanistan

Yeah you get the picture....I hope come October I can save the s.m.o.o.c.h.d.o.g from its demise.

Neither morning nor night

I used to be such a morning person. Now the mornings for me are like moving through sludge. My alarm goes off at 5:35 and I can literally sleep through it, waking up just enough to hit snooze every 9 minutes, for an hour. Once I am up I can get ready, walk the dog, and be out of the house in an hour or less so I am still getting to work by 8:00, but man do I drag. I don’t know how couples who get ready together in the morning do it. The only talking I do is to the dog and some polite courtesies to the barista at Statrbucks. Getting coffee into my veins is a priority. I am glad to be able to switch over to iced coffee now that the weather is getting nicer, but I digress...

The thing is most people are either morning people or night people. I am neither. I am a smack dab in the middle of the day person with tendencies to the late afternoon and early evenings. I am in bed most nights between 10:00-11:00 and anything after that, even on the weekends is a rarity.

Seems I am all about being in the middle these days.

Those darn purse strings need to be tightened even more

It seems the economy is effecting everyone a little more close to home these days and we are no exception. We have had some changes in our finances quite recently that we are starting to really feel. Luckily, we both still have our jobs. We sat down Saturday to work through the numbers and create a budget for the next 6 months. It was a downright bummer, and I’ll admit stressful.

Some of it is due to debt we are working on paying down, but not getting raises or bonuses this year really stings, especially in conjunction with the cost of everything seeming to be on an endless up swing. I was feeling reallyanxious about it Saturday night; everything just seems likebottomless pitwith regard to ever getting caught up; never mind getting ahead. We’d like to refinance to get a better rate for the long-term but until we pay down some other bills AND save up what we would need to pay for closing costs we have to wait.

Adam seems to be able to not get anxious or stressed out by finances. He is able to roll with these things. I know that we will work through this. I know there are many things we have to be grateful for and I know we do still have our jobs. I know (and appreciate all of this) butoursituation right now is just as it is and having to watch every dime has a way of making me nervous.

For now it’s going to be a whole lot of staying home, tightening the tight purse strings, and possibly finding a way to put the dog to work.