Tuesday September 30, 2003: the shadow of the year
It goes like this, in the fall, when the light starts to fade.
The first indication is that I take a week off of work and don't call anyone. Or write anyone. Or, really, have anything even remotely resembling social interaction.
The next indicator is that my sex drive just goes away. I look around one morning and realize that I must have mislaid it somewhere. Maybe I put it under the bed? Did it get batted by the kitten into the closet? I'm not sure.
The third indicator is that Chris and I start having differences of opinion. Well, more differences of level of needs; while i'm slipping away he's reaching out for me, wondering where I've gone. We've gotten used to things as they are in the summer. I think only one of us may have remembered that things change once the equinox comes around.
And, of course, I embrace the change; it feels right to me. I love walking into the shadow of the year, love the opportunities it affords me. I'm tired of long hot days. Chris, on the other hand, hates change with a passion. It's something that comes up this time of year and I'm never certain how to resolve it.
I begin to work on things that I put aside for the summer. I start the planning for three coptic stitch books. I put together submissions of local literary magazines. I write a poem for the bus poetry contest.
I begin to retreat from the world a bit. Trying to find the center I've spun off of in my late-summer gyrations, hacking away at the overgrowth of psyche from the summer to figure out what's real.
And, yes, I'm still running. I pound the pavement or the gravel and my mind goes away. I stop standing in my own way. Little drops of satori waiting for me every time I tie on my shoes. I huff and puff and feel my feet hit the ground, and practice stillness as I'm moving through space.
I run, and I make pretty things, and I write and prepare for sending my writing out into the world.
Drawing back into myself. Getting back to myself as the light goes, paring down what I send into the outside world to just the essential, resting my ears after the long hot noisy summer. Trying not to feel guilty as Chris goes into his yearly fall depressioneque thing and I can't be there to help.
My sex drive turns out not to be missing after all but simply different than it was three weeks ago. I still want, but the want is quieter--it doesn't inform my every waking moment but instead is content to burn banked for the winter. I want only what is essential to me, the things I want down deep.
Everything else can wait.
For a very long time, I scored on the Meyers-Briggs sorter as an INFP--Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceptive. It felt right to me, honestly.
Following the rewiring of my brain from a few years back, though, I turn out to have made a sea change. Every time I take one now it tells me I'm an INTJ--Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging.
Looking at the description of the type, I can see myself in it, definitely. Having spent the first part of my life as something else, there are bits that don't quite fit, but some of them do:
INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.
...To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete', paralleling that of many Fs -- only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a romantic relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness.
SO VERY ME. I mean, I expect and deeply desire the people around me to just make sense. It bothers me when they don't, and especially when I personally don't make sense.
I honestly can't tell if this is the person I was meant to be. It's the person I am now, though, which is good enough for me.
For the moment, at least.
And once more, with feeling: the haircut--
The first indication is that I take a week off of work and don't call anyone. Or write anyone. Or, really, have anything even remotely resembling social interaction.
The next indicator is that my sex drive just goes away. I look around one morning and realize that I must have mislaid it somewhere. Maybe I put it under the bed? Did it get batted by the kitten into the closet? I'm not sure.
The third indicator is that Chris and I start having differences of opinion. Well, more differences of level of needs; while i'm slipping away he's reaching out for me, wondering where I've gone. We've gotten used to things as they are in the summer. I think only one of us may have remembered that things change once the equinox comes around.
And, of course, I embrace the change; it feels right to me. I love walking into the shadow of the year, love the opportunities it affords me. I'm tired of long hot days. Chris, on the other hand, hates change with a passion. It's something that comes up this time of year and I'm never certain how to resolve it.
I begin to work on things that I put aside for the summer. I start the planning for three coptic stitch books. I put together submissions of local literary magazines. I write a poem for the bus poetry contest.
I begin to retreat from the world a bit. Trying to find the center I've spun off of in my late-summer gyrations, hacking away at the overgrowth of psyche from the summer to figure out what's real.
And, yes, I'm still running. I pound the pavement or the gravel and my mind goes away. I stop standing in my own way. Little drops of satori waiting for me every time I tie on my shoes. I huff and puff and feel my feet hit the ground, and practice stillness as I'm moving through space.
I run, and I make pretty things, and I write and prepare for sending my writing out into the world.
Drawing back into myself. Getting back to myself as the light goes, paring down what I send into the outside world to just the essential, resting my ears after the long hot noisy summer. Trying not to feel guilty as Chris goes into his yearly fall depressioneque thing and I can't be there to help.
My sex drive turns out not to be missing after all but simply different than it was three weeks ago. I still want, but the want is quieter--it doesn't inform my every waking moment but instead is content to burn banked for the winter. I want only what is essential to me, the things I want down deep.
Everything else can wait.
For a very long time, I scored on the Meyers-Briggs sorter as an INFP--Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceptive. It felt right to me, honestly.
Following the rewiring of my brain from a few years back, though, I turn out to have made a sea change. Every time I take one now it tells me I'm an INTJ--Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging.
Looking at the description of the type, I can see myself in it, definitely. Having spent the first part of my life as something else, there are bits that don't quite fit, but some of them do:
INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.
...To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete', paralleling that of many Fs -- only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a romantic relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness.
SO VERY ME. I mean, I expect and deeply desire the people around me to just make sense. It bothers me when they don't, and especially when I personally don't make sense.
I honestly can't tell if this is the person I was meant to be. It's the person I am now, though, which is good enough for me.
For the moment, at least.
And once more, with feeling: the haircut--
