Got some stuff for Creative Writing to do tonight, so the earlier I get to Dun Bloggin, the better.
Not that it is particularly hard stuff. I was worried about the 6-10 photos I have to do, but then I reread the assignment description and saw a wonderful, magical word I had missed before : “abstract”.
What is needed, it turns out, are abstract textures and such to use as backgrounds for a video of one of my poems. No prob! I can find that kind of stuff around the apartment. Or at school.
The poem half of the equation won’t be so simple, though. In fact, that is what I am truly dreading, because get this, I am expected to take my thirty line poem from last week and condense it down to 12-18 lines.
The very thought of it makes me queasy. Condense a poem? Does one condense a child? I say thee nay! I would vastly prefer writing a new poem to butchering an existing one. The things this class puts me through.
I am tempted to just remove a bunch of line breaks and consider it done.
Plus I have to bring some original audio to use as background music for the condensed poem.. No prob. I will either use one of my existing tunes or write something suitably ambient from scratch.
And yes, that was a brag. That was me, bragging. I brag sometimes. It is not a bad thing to have bragged.
Still getting used to that idea.
(—)
Got the itch to start reading up on my Myers-Briggs personality type, INTJ, again, and found this page that goes into far more detail than I have ever seen before.
And as happened when I joined an INTJ forum a long time ago, I get this feeling of recognition of parts of myself alongside equal feelings of revulsion and a kind of gratitude over problems I do not have.
Perhaps I am a queer duck even by INTJ standards.
It’s like the INTJ part of me is The Machine, and everything else is The Mother. I definitely think like an INTJ, but I am too sensitive, pragmatic, and ruthlessly devoted to understanding the full picture to fall into the sorts of Asperger type traps that the sort of person described in sites like that fall into.
For example, I don’t consider social ritual and manners to be useless distractions. I do feel free to pick and choose which ones I consider to be functional and which ones are mere arbitrary rules that serve no purpose, but I am very, very concerned about being a considerate and understanding person who doesn’t hurt people accidentally.
Like I have said before, there are “rules” manners – which fork to use – and those are disposable. Following them is optional. If it helps to have rules to follow, then follow them. But if the rules are only getting in the way, then to hell with them.
It’s only the “consideration manners” – like saying something comforting when someone shares something painful to them – that I consider mandatory. And you can’t define that with any fixed ruleset.
On the other hand, I definitely have a fast, decisive, confident mind. That’s The Machine. And why I would hate for anyone to see me as cold and unfeeling, I can see how I might come across as such in certain situations. Some people will always see the dedicated utilitarian pragmatist as some kind of monster. Like the site says, that’s why so many villains are based on an INTJ like archetype. Some of the other types simply can’t accept that you can be a system creating and logical person who makes decisions based on rational consideration instead of emotion and be anything other than a sociopathic monster.
Essentially, they think you can’t do warm things by cold means.
But you can. I am dedicated to pragmatism and utilitarianism because I am determined to make the world a better place and improve the lot of humanity without becoming distracted by dogma, or bogged down in preconceived notions or habits of thought.
The site also talking about arrogance, and yeah, I will cop to that. I don’t personally consider myself arrogant, just sure of myself, but to a lot of people that’s the same thing. Like the site says, us INTJs radiate an aura of confidence. In the right spheres (usually transpersonal ones), I make up my mind rapidly and state my position with total self-assurance because I know, on some level, what went into the decision, which is basically everything I know about the world.
It’s hard for people to grasp that such a thing is even possible. Fast answers can’t be well considered answers. And in a sense they are right, but not really. The fact is, us INTJ types are constantly optimizing our minds, turning them into lean and mean decision making machines, and that results in a mind which, in the right circumstances, is almost alarmingly swift.
The site says that relationships are the biggest stumbling blocks for INTJs, and I suppose that’s true. I don’t think of myself as someone who has problems with relationships, but I do admit my intellectual standards for companionship are extremely high, and that’s a big stumbling block right from the get-go.
And the thing is, I have no idea what I am actually like in relationships. I think I am a pretty good friend, although I wish I had the resources to be more substantially supportive sometimes. But that’s the only kind of relationship I know, at least as an adult, and even that is not as emotionally close as it could be.
I have no idea whether the Machine would get in the way of a romantic or parental relationship. I know that I don’t have to worry about being capable of projecting warmth, compassion, and understanding. I have lots of that on tap at all times. Thats The Mother in me. I don’t have a problem with showing affection or being supportive.
And yet… and yet….
I can’t help thinking of my own warm and affectionate, yet also somehow emotionally distant, mother.
That’s a mystery I have yet to solve.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.