Friday

Let's not get down on Friday. I'm sort of tired. And it's the Friday after when I was supposed to post this anyway, so I should probably shut up now.

So according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I'm an INTP (Introverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving) type, or as so frivolously put by Keirsey.com, an "Architect." For the most part, I agree with Keirsey's definition of my type, except that I'm completely useless in arguments. It may have to do with the fact that I never talk, or that I grew up in a household with one and a half English speakers, which I'm quite sure has permanently diminished both my ability to create coherent sentences at a reasonable pace and my confidence in doing such things, but either way I get utterly tongue-tied as soon as anyone throws me the tiniest curveball that I didn't have a precise plan for.



It's immensely frustrating when I seem like I have no idea what I'm talking about when I absolutely do but I just can't quite put it into words. It's one of the reasons I hate permanence. The spoken word is undoubtedly permanent, and even if I correct myself, the stutters, incorrect tenses, and improper words are still there and can never be fully erased until everyone who heard it and everyone who heard it from those who heard it etc. is dead. That's why I much prefer the written word, specifically in pencil or in a word processor. I can change it, move it around, sculpt it, take all the time I need to find the right words until it's just the way I intend it to be: a perfect representation of my thoughts, unmarred by my vocal inhibitions.

I sometimes wonder what people think of me when my personality seems to change on a dime. My inability to find the exact phrase or word I'm looking for without taking a creepy amount of time to do so makes me contradict myself or even seem like I'm lying. I've also caught myself taking note of my friends' speech quirks/phrases/words and purposefully using them in my own speech, like some kind of vocal Play-Dough ball made of smaller hunks of Play-Dough all shoved together into a giant, multicolored blob whose pieces can still be picked out if you know where the seams are. I kind of want to apologize, but I'm worried I'd look weird for it. Besides, there are still some of those crumbs of different colors stuck on them and it looks kind of gross.

Wait, you're still reading this? It's become more of a therapeutic emotional spew now. In any case, it's great that you're so interested in my deepest, darkest internal workings. I owe you a cookie.

The one bit they got very right was how I love to analyze things. More than once I have excitedly approached my friends before school about some new scientific revelation I had imagined and the next day refute it because of the fruits of further thought. I love proving myself wrong. I don't know why, but I never feel better than when I have restored the status quo of science in my mind. I suppose if you've read this far I can trust you with this: science is such an integral part of my mind that I have no doubt in the nonexistence of any intelligent creator. Spare me the debate, but any kind of god seems just so irrational and even a small amount of contemplation on the nature of most gods reveals deadly contradictions. Just to emphasize the significance of this, my mother was raised Catholic and my father's side of the family is from the deep South.

There's also a highly emotional part of me as well, though. I have actually created a note card that I intend to carry in my purse that pretty much says, "Thanks for caring so much but you're not going to get me to stop crying. Please go away and let me calm down on my own." I won't go into any details, but I start crying at the slightest stimulus. It's infuriating when I begin to tear up if I can't understand a math problem. It must seem contradictory that a scientifically-minded person is so emotional and I can't get it either.

But anyway, again, thanks for listening to this rant.