Alphabet soup

So apparently it’s been determined that I actually *have* a personality, as I had to have it assessed this week. It changed again, but not too much.

Last installment of my personal voyage, I was crowned an ENFP. Extrovert. Intuitive. Feeling. Perceiving. Whee.

I had to retake the test and came up with the Feeling being replaced with Thinking. (ha!). I usually do test as an ENTP, although it’s a little “t” because I don’t like to think. Hurts my widdle brain. 😉

I did apparently score the highest in the class in the Intuitive bit. 100%, actually, and 21 out of 22 on the Perceiving side. Having a touch of psychic ability probably doesn’t hurt matters, I’m sure!

There were two of us with off-the-charts intuitive skills. The instructor put the two of us in a group, and holy crap, were we cognitively identical. (Our only variation is that she scored as an Introvert, which is funny because I’m the one with my head up my butt most of the time.) The instructor asked us to write our names with our right hands. (Easy, breezy.) Then to do so with our left hands. And strangely enough, my buddy and I did that just as quickly too.

The instructor looks at my paper and said, “I haven’t had anybody ambidextrous in my class in six years.” I pointed to my friend and said, “She is, too.” Basically, we defeated the whole exercise about how challenging it is to step out of the side of the brain (and, thus, personality indicator) you’re accustomed to functioning in.

That’s life, though. I hate deadlines and structure and dress codes and “have tos.” My challenge to myself has always been to figure out how to test the boundaries enough to retain my individuality and feel like I did it “my way.”

My score between Thinking and Feeling was a toss-up, at 14-to-10. The instructor said it will probably move more toward the F if I go on to have kids, as it did with her, because you lose your thinking time. (Which would explain why “Grey’s Anatomy” writers are turning our beloved hardass, Miranda Bailey, into a candyass instead. Bastids!) But she did tell me I could choose which one felt right for me.

So, I opened up my little manual and read the differences. ENFPs (my former label) get stressed the hell out by structure, confrontation, conflict, solitude, routine tasks, undemanding situations, emotionally unpleasant conditions, meetings and regulation. Heh. Exactly.

But then Sabre read my latest label (ENTP) and its stress-inducing list, and she said, “Holy shit, that’s you!”

ENTPs are wigged out by too much time alone (mostly true for me), routine, long meetngs, repetitive details (I can’t believe I’m typing two lists. So true!), deadlines, structure, close supervision (amen) and … this was the clincher … “spewing of emotions by others.”

Sabre reminded me of some chick we saw at a bar, who was crying and bawling and making an ass out of herself. What I didn’t realize and that Sabre did is that I stepped somewhere outside of my mind with annoyance and wanted to clobber her. And I did, I remember now. It’s a bar. Drink, smoke and be merry. Listen to music and stay the fuck out of my space if you’re not going to illuminate it.

Or, like I told Sabre, “When I’m not the dysfunctional one in the room, there’s a problem. Those who make me look normal have to be REALLY fucked up.”

That probably explains my love/hate relationship with Meredith Grey. (Shut up, I’d watch TV for a living if I could.) When everyone was calling her “dark and twisty” on the show, I was like, oh yeah, that’s an understatement. So when I was sobbing at my desk yesterday as I said goodbye to my beloved colleague, I realized that I am, in fact, dark and twisty Meredith.

I can’t stand Mer and her problems but you know what? Give me a bout of dysentery so I can fit into her child’s size 6X jeans and I would SO be her. She makes me mad because she reminds me of me. Over-the-top emotional. Guileless. Compulsive. Driven by her heart. (And crotch, apparently. Ahem.) Rendered immobile by choice and conflict. Too busy fighting inside herself to fight for anything else.

As for me, I’m still on the fence about ENFP versus ENTP. The FP is more OCD (how’s that for alphabet soup?), forgetful, prone to depression, disorganized, impatient and sarcastic. (Me? Sarcastic? Hahahaaaaaa.) And the TP (Great. Toilet Paper. Yup, now I see this one will win!) becomes frustrated, unfocused and mouthy; makes excuses; is irritated with others’ incompetence; and is self-critical.

I guess that settles it. ENTP, it is. Incidentally, Sabre and I had complained to the instructor about the either/or nature of the test, and now that I have my scorecard in-hand, apparently NT types hate choosing between two rights and two wrongs. Ha. Which explains why, when I go to rip my mechanic a new asshole today, I will be torn between murdering him or putting my foot up his ass and kicking him across six lanes of traffic!

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