Just skimming a recent study:

At first it’s like,

This study explored stress and coping in electronic sports (esports) athletes and the influence of mental toughness (MT), as defined by two prominent conceptualizations

Ah nice. I know an esports athlete (now working in industry, but I helped him get an epic scholarship, GO HIM, GO ME) and I would just say: People who do this stuff, please take really good care of yourselves.

And then the study is like,

Mental toughness (both frameworks) was associated with the selection of more problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies and less avoidance coping strategies

Nice! I feel so comfortable when a study tells me things that click into place with my existing, incredibly awesome world view. Phew. ;-)

Anyway. Man, avoidance is a killah! Kill u ded. (My words, not theirs). If it goes too far. Everybody avoids, so some is OK.

Because what are you going to do, avoid avoidance? lmao bruh.

As I said in recent publication, my position is, while avoiding doing stuff it’s a good idea to feel stuff. Push back super hard emotionally, but not just in terms of rage—this is way deeper and it’s sustainable. Us INTJ-bots included.

Some measurement tools that were referenced in the study:

• Stress Appraisal Measure (PDF)
• Brief COPE Inventory (PDF)
• MTI, Mental Toughness Inventory: File Not Found (You can find more info in various studies though)

(Do I hear Hard Copy Clan shifting into high gear? PDFSSSSSS. Oh my.)

Filed in: Control /111/ | Feeling /64/ | Therapeutic Practice /145/ | Anxiety /32/

A couple nights ago I started transcribing the bass part from Gamesofluck into MilkyTracker. Not sure what the hell I’m up to, really. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. MilkyTracker is part of the module-tracker family of music software, which is part of my heritage as a C64, Amiga, and MS-DOS demoscene fan.

I thought a lot about how this cover version of Gamesofluck would sound when I was done. I could try something chippy and fun but still hard, something retro and inspiring but also artsy, which is even harder, or something chippy and amazing but extremely detail-oriented. But then I remembered—the more I try to conceptually tie off all the sensory details from square one, usually the astoundingly more difficult the result.

I often have little bouts of creative musical energy (yes, you just heard Marc Carson, Plastic Yamaha Alto Recorder Soloist on that tune) and they’re fun. Little sketches. Good for life relief. Back when I made musics as a professionals (WAY back), I remember struggling to maintain interest in projects after a while. I had to make sure I felt every single note or I was screwed. Might as well be phoning it in.

It took a lot of energy to make music for other people, and that was really frustrating: Did I do it for myself? If so, it often became a portfolio piece. Did I do it for someone else? Uh…a completely different slog. Embarrass. Throw way now. Since then I’ve learned some ways to work around that, like taking a design-first approach, and getting to know the psychology of those involved in a music project, as part of a learning process that can really ignite the outcome. But it’s hard to reconcile the “what’s happening” with “what I anticipated would happen” when your own life-system seems to be subverting you for unknown reasons.

It’s also really depressing in those tired moments that none of this is any kind of excuse for why I feel as if I totally want to get a band like Parcels, but cannot yet speak their sensory-emotive language. You know? They just spoke to me in bass, guitar, FM radio, drums, and keys. So here, hand me those, I’m composing a message back. No—no, I don’t know any of this stuff. Except FM radio, but don’t even know how or why they are tuning it the way they are, ergo no, I’m not an FM radio performance artist.

That part is really terrible. (What a depressing lens on life, Marc. Geez.)

Meanwhile, I’ll bet that if you met a band member and said, “ah, I am really good with Microsoft Excel,” they’d say “f*** man, well much respect, that’s way out of my box,” and there’s a real chance that both of you would be standing there quite confused about your own life choices. Even though EACH of you thinks the other is also pretty impressive to an unreachable degree.

Text Editing

Speaking of Microsoft Excel, I really enjoy creating little spreadsheets and graphs in text format these days. I made a graph out of text symbols recently, charting the temperature in my office:

Why is it so weird to say Geany? Cheany. Oh.

Chenny.

I’ve mentioned before that I really enjoy using Geany and this holds true. My version has zero buttons in the interface, just menu items, 150 or so document tabs, and the current document. I use the Commander plugin mapped to Ctrl+Shift+J to switch to commonly-referenced files. I’ve also got some global keyboard shortcuts which map to external tools that help me find and quickly edit files.

Geany looks really simple, but I’m continually surprised by its depth. Just when I think I know it pretty well, I find some other feature, tip, or workaround.

Be that as it may, I enjoy trying new software and get some energy benefits from new discoveries in this area. So lately I’ve also looked into TextAdept and CudaText.

TextAdept has a really good rep. You can do all this crazy extensible and easy stuff with Lua, or so I’ve heard. You can Lua over here, Lua over there, Lua up in here, shake your derriere. People who write about it are like:

To scratch the surface of how extendable this program is, I’ll give you a few examples:

…and then you can read all about how this text editor is really going to give modern physics a run for its money, or whatever.

The only thing that’s driving me crazy is that somehow, on my system, the various menu items don’t have horizontal separators. Maybe I’m meant to script those in on my own, but I have learned that I like it when menu items have little visual separators, grouping related tasks.

I also looked around the menus for things like “CLICK HERE TO CHANGE COLOR SCHEME” (I was begging for something to say literally this, by the end of my menu-browsing experience). It seems I’m meant to do this kind of thing in a configuration file. Maybe Lua scripting makes this super easy, and I shouldn’t sweat it. But I was kind of sweating it.

As a result, I ended the session. Still, I want to get up to x2 before I start to solidify the way I think about the app as a whole.

CudaText is neat for me because it has ties directly to my past: It’s written in Pascal, of which I have some fond memories from my youth. Mostly, I watched other people do neat things with the language. So Pascal is in my “mechanical pencils, graph paper, calculators, oh and Pascal” box. Things I don’t use terribly often, but really want to make time for, like one would make time for a romantic date and oh my god this is embarrassing.

There’s a nice video on CudaText and apparently TextAdept speaks for itself through pure musical emotion. Or I guess you could immediately go behind the scenes with Michell and his frankly amazing hair. Hm, there’s no real TextAdept middle ground on Youtube…

I also like Nim and noticed a pretty sweet-looking editor written in Nim, called Moe.

This project’s goal is a very customizable, high productivity, high performance and funny animation editor.

You see? Funny animation editor. This can be taken in many ways, but: Thank you. We need more of these. Did you see the pizza? I’m all in.

I woke up and stayed up for a couple hours one night (morning?) last month, from about 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., visualizing a text editor I could write. It would have an “About” dialog where you could play different MIDI songs, with karaoke lyrics. And all the lyrics would be about text editing.

Filed in: Technology /41/ | Energy /121/ | Interests /111/ | Feeling /64/

It’s been a while since I’ve posted study notes, but since I mentioned Napoleon Hill yesterday, I thought I’d review the Wikipedia article.

So here we go! Napoleon Hill, Success Author and Entrepreneur.

And…fraud?

The bullet points:

• Napoleon was generally business- and entrepreneurship-oriented
• He was highly risk-tolerant
  • Invited or made large investments up front
• Highly prospective: New idea—let’s try it.
• Highly receptive to new trends & business models
• Established new ventures top-down
  • Dean, CEO, etc. as if the business was a guaranteed thing, day one
• Taught charisma, boldness
• Made big claims
• Seemed to make excuses for e.g. missing records which would verify his claims about his past (Chicago storage fire)
• First major success in 1928: The Law of Success
• Desired an opulent lifestyle
  • Went into consumer debt to do so
• The Great Depression hit, forcing asset foreclosure. Another reset due to lack of stability.
• He traveled and failed at various business ventures
• In 1935, his first wife filed for divorce. Argh. Sad…
• Think and Grow Rich published
  • He was greatly assisted in writing it by his new wife Rosa
  • The book was a big success
  • Still, the success seems to have been overstated! Amazing, the bluffing.
  • Once again this brought him wealth
  • Once again, he pursued a lavish lifestyle
• 1940 divorce; much of book wealth went to Rosa
• Once again he set out pursuing success
• 1943 remarried; Hill started lecturing in California.
• Publishing patterns:
  • His works were success-oriented. Perhaps at first because it eluded him?
  • Rewrote old manuscripts; saw re-use value of own works
  • Believed in the high value of ideas / concepts
  • Seemingly lied about personal experiences in order to sell his ideas / books
• Seemed OK with half-truths or outright lies in order to achieve success
  • Seemingly lied about being an attorney
  • Lied about meeting famous people
  • Lied about prospects of those who followed his advice
  • Lied to those who signed up for schooling at his institutions
• Charged with fraud / was seemingly OK with committing fraud, over and over
• Drew heavily on the intuition in his works and philosophy
• Drew heavily on harmonization and interpersonal value
• Value readers could expect from his works:
  • Benign pressure to take courage
  • Encouragement to explore the way others work / be open to others’ ideas
  • Urgings to keep one’s chin up
  • Urgings to believe in one’s own success
  • Invitations to believe in universal laws & New Thought principles

Psychological Value Dichotomies

Napoleon was…

• Better with mental information than sensory accomplishment
  • Better at lecturing than doing
  • Better at ideation than building
• Better at projecting interpersonal energy than building relationships
• Better with periods of high risk than stability / sustainability
• Better at bluffing than proving / evidencing
• Better at material pursuits than moral pursuits
  • The high life vs. the good life
• Better at absorbing grand failure than stacking up little successes
• Better at encouraging or stimulating than providing or giving
  • e.g. Energetic endowments vs. monetary endowments
• Better at starting projects than carrying-through
• Better at ending projects than sustaining

(Note: None of these dichotomies are meant to imply weakness so much as provide a mental profile)

Closing Thoughts

Well, that’s what I got from the Wikipedia version of his life, anyway. It was enough to help the reader establish some patterns, even if there’s a lot we don’t know.

My mental model of Napoleon Hill is right in the ENTP zone so far. The mental model of “ENTP means blind-spot Fi” unfortunately seems to hold true here; morality and relational dynamics (common to various models of introverted feeling, or Fi) seemed to hold little or no interest to Napoleon Hill. I would guess that fairness and authentic partner-care were justified concerns on the parts of others involved in personal or business relationships with him.

Reflecting on my experience with his books, I do feel a bit abused in these ways:

• It seems that he lied about who he was, what he accomplished, and therefore the entire value proposition of the book was left in question. I was given what amounted to false evidence, and encouraged to believe that it would work if I’d just believe in it.
• Hill wasn’t authentic about the need for, or lack of, a psychological backstop of personal values systems when money or goals fell through. I’m guessing he repressed this question. I certainly don’t recall much focus on it in his stories. Indeed, looking at his own life, his own pattern was very simple: Don’t think about your own value, simply take it as a constant. Treat life as more of a game than a values exploration. This puts a lot of readers in a hard place, because they absolutely do need to consider this (completely missing) values question given their own personality dynamics.
• Hill doesn’t seem to have given much, if any, focus to his personal weaknesses. He didn’t seem to care about personal development, though he encouraged it in others. He encouraged others to develop in themselves the capacity to become more like him! This reminds me of Linda Berens’ Be Like Me concept of personality.

Learning points:

• It’s tempting to embellish, or lie, in order to sell something. A story, a business idea, etc. It’s a good reminder to give this attention, as the economic world does indeed encourage and incentivize this kind of behavior. This sets up a painful Fi-blind-spot reveal later on, which can not only affect us but also our friends, family, and fans.
• Some people are born with a higher capacity for risk tolerance, resilience, and the ability to more or less ignore how they feel about themselves as they push forward. This doesn’t mean they’ll be a success. It also doesn’t mean they’re worth listening to, or learning from.
• Someone can sell you on their viewpoint or philosophy long before you ever learn whether they’re worth learning from. This calls for periodic reflection and taking compass readings from one’s own value system.
• People really, really want energy, courage, and motivation from day one. In my experience, this is a lifetime development process. It may be that we need to change the cultural narrative around energy so to help build a more resilient and stable-success-prone humanity.

Anyway, while reading about Napoleon I was reminded of these ENTPs:

• John McAfee
  • The mad scramble to get attention, cultivate energy, develop and hold onto big ideas long enough to see how they pan out
  • Romantic, grandiose view of life
• Tony Buzan (RIP, April 2019)
  • Highly charismatic. Heavy focus on ideas. Entrepreneurial. Attracted some doubt regarding specific teachings or principles. Writing & lecturing gifts.
• Don Pendleton
  • Author / creator of the Executioner and Mack Bolan series of books.
  • Highly charismatic, romantic, idealistic in concept and speech. High-minded.

That’s all for now…it was fun to review, and I’ll give him this: He left behind an interesting history!

Filed in: ENTP /9/ | Relationships /78/ | People /74/ | Books /10/

OK since I just trash-talked my walking experience, let me share some quick hugs:

Finding New Places

It’s fun to identify a new route and match it up with:

• A specific time of year
• A specific time of day
• A specific goal, or activity

For example, grabbing some favorite stationery and walking to the library on an overcast Saturday morning in the fall. Picking out a nice place to relax, read, and write. DOES life get better than this? IDK.

Trying New Gear

Whether for walking or hiking: I really enjoy speccing out new gear and gadgets to use out in the cold, rain, sun, or whatever. New clothes, a new watch, a new ham radio, shortwave radio, headphones, camera, sketchbook, pen, monocular, flashlight…it’s all a lot of fun.

You know those little Chinese mp3 players? I have tried a LOT of those and I have Opinions.

Did you know you can just buy shirt sleeves without the torso part of the shirt? You can just buy sleeves, and I’ve tried them out as a way of wearing a T-shirt but also not getting skin cancer again, and they’re kinda neat!

Planning and Trying New Techniques

Walking has become extremely technical. Leave it to an INTJ, boyzzz. Things can get pretty deep in these ways:

• What are my diet and fitness goals? If I’m on a heavy cut, where do I draw the line?
• What to drink, how much to drink, what snacks to bring, when to eat, and where? A single piece of candy can Change Yo Life when you have been walking for an hour or two.
• What activities during the walk? Music? Podcast? Radio? RPG? Phone call? Photography? Sketching? Mapping? What do they mean / what’s the significance? You know—on the inside?
• How far / long to walk, given my energy needs or current energy reservoir? A long walk in the morning can absolutely ruin your day, depending on circumstances.
• How much of a given drug to take before, during, or after a walk. Nothing really hardcore here, just some relatively normal supplements and things… I experiment with this stuff all the time. Mostly trying to find little matches between how I’m feeling and what outcome I’m wanting. A long-time favorite is caffeine, because it absolutely lights up my Ne / extroverted intuition while I’m out walking. This is nice because I can give a bit less attention to the varying sensory aspects of the walk, and the result is lessened pressure and more enjoyment.
• In my area you can morph a walk into a hike, and vice-versa. So: What parts will be a hike, and what parts will be a walk? This decision can affect your energy profile in no time, in a variety of different ways.
• How can I make the outcome of this walk as awesome as possible?

Hanging Out with Family

Sometimes my wife will say, “hey, what if we do a picnic in the city park? If you want, you could join us when you’re walking by the area?” She’s very good at coincident-ing plans like that. That’s super cool.

Chatting with Friends

I mentioned ham radio above. One of my favorite scary memories is getting caught out in a sudden lightning storm. BOOOOOOM there was this huge thunderclap, and I looked up to see those ominous clouds rolling over the mountains toward me. Coming fast, already pelting me with rain. People in the neighborhood—not my neighborhood, but a neighborhood across town where I was walking—screaming at this explosion. Yelling at their kids to come inside. And me, caught out there on a random street with no shelter. And then running for my literal life for longer than I had run in a long time. Rain pouring down in buckets. I was finally able to take shelter under a tree in a relatively safe location and contact my wife, who drove out and rescued me.

By the way, did you know that walking helps you become a better runner? I mean, if you don’t like to run for whatever reason, walking and hiking still help to prepare your body, should you ever need to run across town. Kind of a neat discovery.

Anyway, I happened to be on the ham radio at the time, and the experience was a bit concerning for those with whom I was chatting. So now I get lots of “careful out there in the lightning” nudge-nudge warnings when the weather is turning. It’s funny. But it’s nice to be able to have friends who are easy to reach like that. They were checking in on me, too! Making sure I got picked up and was safe afterward.

And I guess I’ll wrap this with a plug for ham radio friendships: They’re technical. They’re also relational. This can be really nice! Yes, I get that you might feel Threatened by a Piece of Certification-paper which Means Nothing because You’re Very Smart Already, and Don’t Need to feel Judged by this in-crowd of Other Technical People. I’ve heard this before from INTJs and I know where they’re coming from. But I mean—it’s also a great community and a lot of fun can be had. Worth a go, I think, if you’re interested in radio or tech stuff at all.

Filed in: Interests /111/ | Fitness /31/

So, I’ve been walking regularly since sometime in 2013, back when the following conversation with my wife happened:

• Me: “I am really starting to hate the feeling of just pushing SO hard out there on my bike. I always end up racing traffic or dodging cats or throwing up on the side of the road because you went out of town and I wasn’t sure what to eat, so I ate half of a Pepperidge Farm Coconut Layer Cake and drank a bottle of orange juice or something.”
• Blog Matron ISFJ, Keeper of the Sensible Perspective: “Hmm…you know, what if you just went for a nice walk? They say you can burn a surprising amount of calories doing that, and it’s very gentle exercise. Even just a walk around the block feels good.”
• Me: “…huh.”

It didn’t really sound that great as exercise, but the idea of anything gentle and exercise-like sounded like it might be worth entertaining at the very least.

So I took my first walk around the block and returned with a huge patch of sweat on the front of my shirt, and a new feeling, like I’d just visited an entirely different planet. Not bad!

At that time I was super out of shape, still close to 300 pounds. I still thought that counting calories was really dumb, and I also thought I knew everything about how to get and stay in shape, even though I had been obese for my entire adult life. And it was this darn walking, this simple, sensible thing that I kept doing over the following years, that finally got me down to extreme-weight-loss levels.

It still blows my mind how far you can walk, if you really want to. We’d go on vacation and stay at a friend’s house, and I discovered that I could get up at 6 a.m., start walking, and return at about 10 or 11 a.m. having explored parts of the next city over, which was super fun.

Except for that One Part: Being an NPC

The thing I don’t like about walking is that I’ve had to invent clever ways of setting boundaries with other people. People see you out there and a lot of them think you’re basically an NPC. So they’ll do weird stuff in their cars around you, or they’ll get really suspicious of you for no good reason, or they’ll shout random stuff, or stare at you really strangely for no apparent reason, and so on.

Some facts:

• Being a man who walks by himself carries the “random women think you’re probably really creepy” stigma. That part sucks, but that part can also go floof itself. (I do try to accommodate people’s fears a bit, by crossing the road away from them when appropriate, or taking a different route than the one presently occupied by a lone jogger straight out of some crime drama)
• My ninja personality knowledge has taught me that I am capable of triggering ESFPs from about half a mile out. Man, woman, child, doesn’t matter. They are so flipping concerned about my presence. Bearded quiet ninja guy is here again! One of them asked me once, “why are you taking photos of houses in our neighborhood?” Huh? Oh, you mean that house that’s for sale, the one with the sign in front? The one across the street from your house? The one I thought about purchasing, right up until I learned you’d be my neighbor? Geez.
• The ESFP men tend to think you want to talk to everyone in the vicinity, including them, because why wouldn’t a person want to do this? It’s a beautiful day. Who wouldn’t want to be talking to everyone, on a day like this? (Italian gesture-shrug) Then if you don’t talk to them, they really start to size you up.
• If you have gear, you need to make sure it’s colorful and sporty, or people will think you’re up to no good. If—god forbid—it’s Field Day and you want to hop on your ham radio real quick, make sure it’s a blue or yellow or green or orange ham radio. DO NOT USE the black one because people will wonder what’s going down in their ‘hood. No guarantees on the red ones.
• Likewise, your clothing should have some sporty element. Us gray-loving INTJs are at a huge disadvantage here. You do not blend in as a walker when you’re wearing gray. You stand out, because if you’re not a super-colorful sporty walker person, or a muted-colors, strappy hiking person with wool socks, then what the hell are you doing? Do you mean to tell me you’re just out for a walk?
• A lot of people are definitely not doing anything at home, and they’re staring at you as you walk by. So it’s best to change up one’s walking routes, otherwise they will find a way to become deathly concerned about your frequent passage.
• People in cars think that you are a walking information booth. Man, I have done my best for people in at least three languages by now. But they’re always asking how they can get from here to some place across town! I can’t just point in a direction and tell you to drive that way! We have curves and intersections and one-way streets here. If you don’t have a phone with maps, I am not giving you turn-by-turn! It may be hard to understand, but this is super frustrating.
• Sometimes these fancy-pants extroverted intuitives in cars will point out a literal mountain, and they’ll ask, “how do I get to up there?” Huh? “I just need to be in the mountains right now.” Uh. OK, most of what’s between here and there is private land, or just dangerous, curvy roads I don’t know about…here, let me give you directions to the freeway, which will eventually get you to a mountain pass, where it’s probably more public and safer for a hyper-idealistic weirdo like you.
• Other people in cars are not so nice. They’re bored and they’ll roll down their window and shout or something. It’s strange, but they’re triggered somehow, so it happens. I’m good at ignoring it, mostly.

But then

OK and what this adds up to, once again: I’ve become this know-it-all INTJ walker guy. I’m out there and I think I’m pretty savvy! My intuition can tell me what things are about to happen, when I’m walking.

Which led to today’s embarrassing experience.

I was out walking this morning, and this big American sedan drives up slowly from behind. Lowered body, medium-tinted windows. I look over and the driver is gawking at me. Great. Why did I just make eye contact? This better not be some random harassment.

He’s driving up from behind, then he pulls over a bit and does a U-turn across the center of the street, coming in my direction! He’s pulling up about 30 feet in front of me, and I just know it: This guy wants to mess with me.

My intuition is RAGING at this point. I’m too tired to stop and change direction. I keep walking toward him. But I need to vent. Something is about to go down.

“Look at THIS asshole,” I grumble, out loud. The guy’s still in his car. He can’t hear me.

Just then, next to me, I notice a tree moving. Oh. Hello! Not a tree! It’s a human! She’s standing on her lawn, WAITING for this guy to come pick her up! Oh no!

I’m pretty sure it was his wife! Oh man.

Her mouth hung open, as she stared at me with the most confused look.

My look, in return, was something like total INTJ shock…

You see? It’s hard being an NPC. Overall the pros far outweigh the cons. But a lot of the time I’m either trying to avoid what my intuition tells me is absolutely worth avoiding, or trying to engage my senses enough to maneuver through something like a pleasant but unexpected conversation.

Or you know, I’m out there calling somebody’s really sweet husband an a-hole. NEXT ARTICLE.

Filed in: Fitness /31/ | People /74/ | Intuition /63/

Remember how I intuited that, err, observationally speaking, Davie504 sure seemed like an INTJ to me? (I mean, his link is only plastered up there at the top of my blog. How could you miss that?)

Well, now he’s gone and posted a terrific video of his life story. And I think it’s both resonant and valuable from the INTJ perspective.

There are some little details in the video that I really love, like the part where he intuited “huge viewer profit” if he invested in a mega-expensive bass guitar. (11:40) That’s really epic, and figuring out that kind of leverage point is such a legendary INTJ move.

He also did the economically-expedient, “not enjoying this,” FOUND THE UNIVERSITY EJECTION SEAT BUTTON maneuver with which I know a lot of INTJs are familiar. (Sure it leads to quite a scramble for a while, but a lot of you guys have made it happen. Hell, I didn’t get my own university diploma until 2018…but that’s another story)

And of course, he’s good at being funny, playing the bass, and editing videos, and offering free therapy at the end of his videos, and then after all THAT stuff you’re like, WTF, he can illustrate his life story live, on a whiteboard, too???!!! This is just too much. And in that way I think he’s also being the INTJ. Sometimes we’re too much. It’s the push, man. Epic performances enable epic stonks profits. Something like that.

You may have also noticed Electroboom has been emulating Davie504 on his channel. Here I think we have an ESFP who is sniffing at our INTJ butts again. Stonks go up, and all the ESFPs run around throwing money at the nearest INTJ. Pretty freakin’ funny channel though. I approve.

Filed in: People /74/ | ESFP /4/ | Careers /40/

Back when I was first exploring the subjective intuition, the universe assembled an absolute unit of a three-member team to help me out. They were wherever I needed them to be, and I turned to them for feedback, new insights, and comfort.

Overall it was an amazing, life-changing experience, even though it began in a very simple way: One day I tried to imagine some people coming to help me out, and there they were.

(Years before this happened, I had read a tiny bit about this in Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, but his version, called “Invisible Counselors,” never really clicked for me. His description made it sound far too noble, composed, brilliant, and stuffy. And I think I already was enough of those things, or thought I was.)

Here are those first three people I met, and what I learned from them.

Explorer ENTP Guy

This person swung into my backyard on a vine. Dressed kind of like Indiana Jones. That’s how cool his entrance was. He was hyper-excited by life, though; a bit more scientific and nerdy than Indiana Jones. I think this version of Lindybeige gets a little bit close to the imagined-experience, in terms of both dress and general level of interest in things.

This character was really exciting in a few ways:

• First, THANK YOU GOD FOR NOT SENDING LITERAL SATAN OR SOMETHING was maybe my repressed line of thought at the time. I was pretty fundamentally religious at this point, and I think it would have been just one more annoyance on the pile. Like c’mon, send somebody cool and also not foreboding. And this was just an ordinary person. Not perfect or inscrutable by any means. That felt really good, because I knew I could be quite a perfectionist with my personal development.
• Speaking of cool, I’d say this person made me feel cool for being nerdy and excited about life. He encouraged that part of me. You see? Cool is contextual. So my resonance with this person was very exciting in that way, as it made me feel a sense of permission and encouragement that I hadn’t felt before.
• Finally, he was always off to explore some new thing. He wasn’t there for me because he loved me or anything like that. But he was happy to help where he could, and offer some gentle insights. When I needed a quick consult, I would always catch him in the middle of heading somewhere, or doing something interesting. I think I needed to feel that “if you blink you might miss something interesting” energy. At any given moment there’s always something interesting going on, and this feeling helped propel me out of depression-land.

For a lot of INTJs I know, this is all good stuff. More of that kind of person in their life would be helpful, because while it’s a bit of a push and a stretch, it’s maybe more of an intellectual push and stretch, which is straight-across compatible with their huge brains.

Incidentally, my big brother is a lot like this guy. When we can hang out or do a call, it’s pretty fun to explore new ideas or new inventions or new places, and his energy is really infectious. When we exchange text-based messages, it’s a bit different though. It’s like we’re competing to see who can squeeze in the most uses of the word “interesting”. Interesting.

Dark ISFP Girl

This girl was kind of a goth. Oh right, links. I mean, goth. She was my energy accountability muse. I would work super hard and then look over and just realize I was killing her over there. So depressed and sad! I was breaking the goth! Dammit. Never break the goth. Help the goth. Make the goth more comfortable. Support the goth.

Anyway, she needed attention:

• Can we relax a bit, just enjoy a nice break?
• Is all that exertion really worth it?
• How could we take better care of ourselves?

Because yeah, part of me was this neglected goth girl. The thing I really respect about people like this is that they are good at paying attention to their feels, right? That was important for me at the time. Recall that one of my big answers to my “why am I suffering from depression” question was “you are pushing it too hard, just overworking yourself in the name of very little that is making you feel good.” There was no attention to my feels. And that’s pretty much always gonna draw out the goths, I’m thinking.

We didn’t talk much. She let me talk all I wanted, and in exchange I could easily intuit the way she felt, which completed the feedback loop. I would reflect on her and go, “well OK. Let’s change contexts a bit here, then we’ll do A, B, and C and that will help.”

Chill ISFP Guy

I know, it’d be nice if there was some symmetry here. One ENTP guy, and then a couple ISFPs? What the duck! Eh, I never claimed this would be some kind of masterpiece of self-contained logic…

Chill ISFP guy reminds me of Joel McHale in a way. Similar looks. Not at all a comedic actor though. He was a member of a band, and they played post-rock music, kinda like The Mercury Program.

This guy gave me some very good advice that helped me deal with anxiety in public. This is back when I was still scoring relatively high on measurement tools like the Burns Anxiety Inventory (PDF). I was regularly scoring in the high 30s, which put me in the “Severe Anxiety” zone.

One super helpful thing about his advice was that it was mostly contextual, and that really made a huge difference. He gave different advice based on each situation or event.

In fact, I had never realized how much I could use a context-specific plan or approach, going into a public setting or a family gathering. He helped me find my “point of most-socially-compatible chill” in a lot of ways. If I started to panic, I’d look down and there he was, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, relaxed. He offered a meta-perspective that helped me see new ways to navigate what otherwise seemed like difficult situations.

Chill ISFP Guy also had a special reconciliation talent that worked from the inside out. Rather than the ESFP-like outward-first, social-pressure-first reconciliation, similar to performance art, he would say, “look, here’s how you feel. And here’s what you can do so you can relieve some of the pressure, so you can feel better.” But he would continue to work outward from there, also covering the social bases, helping me spread good vibes to others. In this way I was able to navigate through some tricky moments socially while also taking care of myself and setting boundaries.

It was really hard for me to figure out ISFP guy’s personality type. The other two I had figured out within days. But I wondered about him on and off for months. ISTJ? Kinda…but no. INTJ? Sure! But no. When I finally came to terms with this unity of male-archetypes and feeler-archetypes and went, “oh, he’s an ISFP,” it was a fascinating moment. In the years following this experience, I built up quite a list of ISFP guys, as they are a healthy reference point for me in a lot of ways.

The Fade-out

After about a year, these friends started to fade. This was really sad at first. I didn’t see them or even need them as often. I think this is because the need had diminished. I tried my level best to integrate what they taught me, picking up some new directions and even new skills. I had also learned a lot of other methods for drawing on the intuition that don’t involve imagining and consulting these sorts of helpful people.

However, there are still times when I need their energy, and while it’s fun to know that a lot of different perspectives are available, I have also learned that I may have to be very conscious about reviewing and selecting archetypes for assistance. It’s still up to me to plan and decide what tools I want to use, and counting on the intuition to jump in and solve things automatically, without any conscious effort, is far from a safe bet.

Filed in: ISFP /2/ | Feeling /64/ | Fi /35/ | ENTP /9/ | Depression /12/ | Therapeutic Practice /145/ | Anxiety /32/ | Ni /42/ | Intuition /63/

Wes writes,

I hate to admit it but my family accuses me of being two-faced. I worry that they may be right. I think this carries over into the stress I feel when I’m in public situations. It’s like I’m a walking pair of opposites, and one of them is really, really scary.

Wes brings up a really terrifying scale, or dichotomy, for many INTJs. Hell, even just for many people. But we INTJs do tend to have this inferior-Se, tertiary Fi, posterior-fascinated “actor” role that tempts us and taunts us until we reconcile things.

The extreme end of that role is up there on the left of the post title, with the opposite at the right.

I chose and positioned the word “Performant” because I think a lot of INTJs would draw the “yeah I’m definitely that kinda person” line right about there. (Thinking of yourself as a Performant person feels good, right? Because you’re a walking wad of technology. You’re basically Performant Wetware, INTJ. Kidding!)

Here’s something relevant which I’ve mentioned in a couple of my publications: Jung’s notion was that personality type kind of sucks. Type explains a lot of things, sure. But what if it also effectively anchors us in our own type, leading us to fail at the integration of opposites?

What if we never transcend opposites like “good vs. evil”, “political group A vs. political group B”, “INTJ vs. ESFP”, or heck, INTJ vs. any other type?

Well, in Jung’s view this would not be a good outcome at all. It would mean eternal war. And eternal lies, eternal projection onto others, all this stuff that makes a person or a body of people behave as if they hate themselves. All good points.

Wes brings up the word “scary.” I don’t know exactly why he used that word, but here are some typical reasons:

• This side of me was very loud and inconsiderate
• This side of me pushed me to lie to others
• This side of me just couldn’t get enough of itself
• This side of me is a showoff
• This side of me tries to do the impossible, even without any preparation

Man, I’ve got some absolutely embarrassing memories of that stuff myself. I remember one time I acted my way through a high school AP history class. For the first two weeks the teacher thought my name was Marconi, and that I was from Spain. Then other hijinks ensued. My ESFP classmate friend LOVED this. And it felt really good, in a way! But it was also really, really uncomfortable. I wasn’t in control—something else was. I later found that this had a lot to do with a level of personal discomfort with the teacher’s perspectives, not on history, but on life itself. Discomfort with what you could call his psychology. Shrinking from that. And at the same time, there was a corresponding pull toward ESFP-friend’s psychology.

I’ve also heard some fascinating experiences shared by INTJs who explored this dichotomy themselves. People who for the most part appear ultra-composed. These individuals were making tremendous life sacrifices just to keep the “Crazy, Histrionic” parts at bay. And then one night just a couple of environmental, circumstantial triggers were enough to show them that those parts were very much alive.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

• Leaving this topic alone is a really bad move. That’s how you get the bad outcomes in the first place: Lack of attention to painful spots. Lack of exposure to this field of study, lack of analysis, lack of learned skill, lack of refinement over time, etc.
• As an INTJ I’m good at looking into stuff in that methodical way, so I am carrying this skill into the exploration of this dichotomy, or I’m probably screwed. I’m not going to let this slide—my researcher / analyst role is on the case and that feels good.
• So I research and analyze it. I research the psychology, but I also watch actors, politicians, and leaders, and try to see what I can discover about them, or from them. I listen to podcasts with ESFPs or other personalities who ended up in acting or very outward-facing roles. I listen for exact answers to the questions I ask myself. Sometimes there are big surprises in there.
• I’m also open to reviewing my past. Rather than just “something embarrassing happened, cringe, move on, hurry,” I try to find an angle from which to explore that awkward experience or past memory. I do that on the blog here sometimes.
• If you get a weird, stinging performance assessment, about 200% of the time it’s from someone who is uncomfortable with that part of themselves (well, I don’t know what percent, but maybe 50-75%).
• It’s normal to write one way and act another way in person. For example, if you put me in a public meeting setting right now, chances are I’m not going to come off as terribly charismatic. But writing here on the blog, I try to enjoy things, be a bit more imaginative and fun, and generally explore a different side of my life. While it may not seem like everyone else does this, other people have their own devil’s-dichotomies. The less-explored, the worse off they may be, for all we know.
• It’s also OK to leverage your introversion. To use it as a tool to help yourself stay calm and to fight pressure. Keep in mind that this can boil over. You can sometimes prevent the boil-over by being a little bit extroverted in advance of the boil over.
• If you’re being the outgoing one in a relationship, and it doesn’t “feel fair” to you, ask yourself if that’s a covert contract with your partner. Do they know about your perceptions? Have you both identified ways to reconcile? This can be difficult if your partner is really de-energized by relational processes. But a good relationship also requires some amount of work toward flexibility and a shared perception of positive outcomes.

Well, that’s a lot of bullet points. Hang in there, Wes and everybody else. I know it’s not easy but it’s also a whole flippin’ world that’s full of fascinating information and tools, and if it’s also personally relevant…why not go there, push on it a little and learn some new stuff.

Filed in: Sensation /40/ | Energy /121/ | Therapeutic Practice /145/ | Feeling /64/ | Control /111/ | Relationships /78/

Ahem. Is this thing on?

Today I’d like to publicly thank and congratulate “Scott” for his contributions to humanity.

Indeed, so great are my thanks that I am hereby slotting Scott into the award-winner category.

Have you seen the blog’s Buy Me a Coffee button? Recently I posted a little note over in our blog’s casual, trendy Sidebar-town:

The coffee-buying feature has not been used once since it was installed earlier in 2020. LMAO. I will dedicate a blog award to the first INTJ who buys me a coffee.

You see, at first I thought the button was broken for a while. Huh. Works for me?

Then, during some of those rough moments, I started to imagine the worst. Man, what if it’s a bunch of hyper-unhealthy INTJs out there, mocking blog-kun’s little orange button. “Altruism is for people who don’t understand economics. Give me something worth paying for. Economic Straight-talk radio with Miles & Jake is WAY better than some guy’s dumb blog, and I don’t buy coffee for Miles and Jake”.

Well, maybe ya should, I think is what I’m feeling about that little scenario, scenario-guy.

But then I realized people probably don’t visit Sidebar Town that much in the first place. Like our RSS Chipmunks. They have no concept of a sidebar, except as a sort of mega-long list of categories of things they are missing out on more and more with every passing [timed refresh period].

While kind of a bummer, the upside is that this means we can continue to preserve that wabi-sabi chic, the Sidebar cachet. Don’t tell your friends about Sidebar-cho! And its Italian scooter-riding, watercolor-sketching, donut-eating group of wabi-sabi types that meets every Saturday to smile with one another and create works of art! Casually!

Back to the Award Promise

But everything changed today. Out of nowhere came Scott.

Scott with his thumbs-up, the thumbs-up that changed the world of blogging forever.

The Award

The Scott Award is Hereby Inaugurated, on this 0111 UTC’th Moment of the 6th Day of Blog-kun Local Time June, in the Portentious Year of Our Blog 12020.

The Scott Award: A simple thumbs-up, awarded for a universally understood and potent demonstration of goodwill toward all mankind. Cuz coffee’s potent.

Scott is entitled to download the award image and affix it to a flat or semi-curved surface of his choice.

This blog award will be thought about by its creator for a while. I need to decide who ELSE gets it, for one. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Oh and I’d like to thank Wikimedia user Raoli for their contribution of the thumbs-up-model portion of the award, without which we might well be staring at a greatly-magnified generic emoji. Beautiful job, Raoli.

That’s all for now. The Award-naming season has closed temporarily. Thank you all for attending today’s ceremony. And thanks again, Scott. A hearty thumbs-up right back at you.

Filed in: Randomness /26/ | Goals /52/ | People /74/

Speaking of product reviewers.

I slept over in this INTJ’s apartment once, while I was traveling through town. He wasn’t there but his apartment was always in that kind of “shabby presentable” state. You know this state? I know this state. I think his reasoning was, “I’ll contingency-plan for visitors, otherwise they’ll drive me up the wall.” Whatever it was, it kind of turned him into a visitor-lover. YO, STAY AT MY PLACE. NO PROBLEM.

He had this stack of brand-new erasers on his dresser. Nothing expensive, but a little bit rare. Like if I ask you, “have you tried the ain stein” and you go OH YEAH, then you’re in our boat here. (Otherwise it’s just a treasure that awaits you, maybe)

I immediately knew what was up with eraser INTJ. He had found his gold. I gave him a quick mental hug before collapsing in his bed, near-certain the mattress had been optimized for cost and performance.

The mindset is so familiar. You know what happens with a gold eraser like this? It flies off the shelves. Well…maybe. One never knows, maybe it’ll be discontinued. It would be just our luck. So of course he bought a stack. More than 4, less than 20, is what I remember.

You know what other people think of this? They go, “OH GOD THIS GUY HOARDS ERASERS” or whatever. So that was a bit of a gem to me, because I get it and when you get a little thing in the universe, it’s like your identity is affirmed right there. You don’t exist as some kind of a standalone mistake in the universe. This other eraser geek is also a mistake like you, at the very least.

And I get that buying an eraser can be metaphorical, like maybe a way for your subconscious to beg you, “stop trying to outrun your past—go back and address that stuff.” But also: Whatever, it’s cool, we can just talk erasers if u like.

Filed in: Randomness /26/ | Technology /41/ | Interests /111/