Off the Plan

A couple of weeks ago I took a personality test for work. And it came back negative!

Ba-dum-dum. Thank you very much. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Seriously though, everyone who comes to work at IVCC takes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in order to identify their personality "type." I guess the idea came from a former president who was big into learning styles and brain testing and thought that if employees know what type of person they are, they can maximize strengths and work on weaknesses. I don't know about that - but I do think the results are interesting.

Surprisingly, after answering only 30 or 40 questions, the resulting interpretive report is pretty accurate. As it happens, my type is ENFP - which stands for Extroverted Intuition with Feeling. Some interesting tidbits from the report:

"People with ENFP preferences see life as a creative adventure full of exciting possibilities. . . They need affirmation from others and readily give appreciation and support to others. . . They are stimulated by new people, ideas, and experiences. THey fiund meaning and significance readily and see connections that others don't. They are likely to be curious, creative, imaginative, energetic, enthusiastic, and spontaneous. . . ENFPs value harmony and goodwill. They like to please others and will adapt to others' needs and wishes when possible. . . They value depth and authenticity in their close relationships and direct great energy to creativing and supporting open and honest communication."

Okay, so nice things, right? Makes me sound like quite a dynamo. Here's one of the more accurate and irritating passages:

"ENFPs hate routine, schedules, and structure, and usually manage to avoid them."

Yeah, I'm afraid it's true. As soon as I establish some kind of schedule or routine, I almost immediately feel the need to disregard it. When I do, I get this weird sense of liberty and freedom. If I'm supposed to be reading over my lunch break but instead I'm driving off with Suzanne to Fourth Street Bakery, I'm always light and happy. If I'm supposed to attend a meeting but, for whatever reason, end up missing it, I'm happy as can be.

Why is this on my mind? Well, you know how I wrote the other day about needing to grade so many papers a day and read so many film essays in order to stay on track? Guess how much of that has gotten done?

Not much.

Now, it's not all my fault. On Wednesday, I was supposed to put up the rest of the mini-blinds in the windows of the house and, once that was done, I was going to devote a couple of hours to grading and reading. Well, there were (ahem) technical difficulties and what should have taken an hour or two turned into a four hour odyssey that involved much anger, frustration, and repositioned blinds. By the time it was all over, all I felt like doing was stewing about my ineptitude with tools, measuring, fixing stuff, etc. and waiting for Lost to come on. It had been a hard day.

See what I did there? I found a perfectly legitimate excuse for not sticking with my schedule. I'm pretty good at that.

There are a couple of problems (as you might imagine) with a trait like this. First of all, I'm married to a woman who loves schedules and planning and routine the way she loves her mother, America, and oxygen. The idea that opposites attract is true. I don't think anyone mentions how frustrating the reality of that truth can be however.

The other problem is that I still have to get things done, you know? I still have to be a productive member of society, a useful employee, a dedicated student, etc. Tossing schedules to the wind doesn't really serve me in any of those roles. The unfortunate and ironic thing is that, last week, I was called to be the executive secretary in my ward, the guy in charge of scheduling a lot of stuff. It doesn't take a poet to recognize that poetic justice.

The novelist and creative writing teacher Carolyn See has this idea that writers shouldn't talk about their work. The whole first section of her wonderful book, Making a Literary Life, is entitled "Keep It To Yourself" and she writes about how once a writer starts to talk about his or her book, it's suddenly no longer their personal project. It becomes public property and people feel just fine about wandering up and saying, "So how's the book coming?" See feels that kind of public-ness ruins personal projects like writing and takes away the magic and the book sooner or later dies in the water.

I wonder if my goals to read or grade or whatever are like that - as soon as I utter them aloud, they die and I suddenly have to find something else to do. Maybe I just need to keep stuff like that to myself. But then what would I write about here?

Then again, if I don't keep it to myself and I do write about it, I kinda get extra mileage out of my posts - one to announce my goal and another to lament how badly I failed at meeting that goal. How about that? Everybody wins - or loses, depending on how you look at it.

Sigh. Back to work tomorrow.