ISTJ

I was a teenager, I think, when my father brought home the Myers-Briggs test and everyone in my family took it. I scored as an ISTJ—Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging. The husband is an INTJ (the only difference being Intuitive instead of Sensing), which is why we get along so well. Two peas in a pod, we are. 

The critical part of those four letters (for me, at least) is the "I." I am an introvert. When I am mentally run-down, I NEED alone time to recharge my batteries. I need it almost more than I need food or water; I've gotten to the point where I can recognize exactly when it's time for me to get away from people by the way my brain is screaming for peace and quiet. 

I'm really good at fooling people into thinking I am an extrovert, because I have learned how to be an extrovert. I can do it for short periods—say, about three days, or the length of an average knitting conference or teaching gig. After my extrovert batteries get drained, however, I just shut down mentally. Truly—my brain simply stops functioning and I have trouble concentrating or engaging in conversation. It makes it hard when I travel to teach for a knitting guild. I usually offer to stay with someone to help the guild save on expenses. Interestingly, though, the people who offer to host me are often extroverts who want to stay up talking and knitting until the wee hours of the morning, when I would rather shut myself in my room by myself and knit or read for a couple of hours. It's not because I am trying to be rude or unsociable; it's simply because my brain needs time to recharge and it can't do that if it's required to interact with another person. And extroverts—bless their hearts—recharge their batteries by interacting with other people. You see the dilemma. 

I can avoid problems if I am careful to build periods of recharging into my schedule. It's when those recharging times get postponed or disrupted or eliminated altogether that I have problems, and I begin to feel as though I am being pecked to death by ducks. I had a week like that last week, which is why there were no blog posts from me. I'm pretty sure they would have consisted mostly of rants against my fellow human beings, and who wants to read that? 

One of my knitting projects from last week bombed completely—thankfully, it was a small project and only represents a few lost hours of knitting time. The concept was sound; the execution needs some retooling. I find that I am a bit adrift at the moment, design-wise, and I am trying not to get too freaked out about it. I half-expected this to happen. It's a matter of getting my designing legs underneath me again now that I am no longer constrained by the need to design things with cables in them. Last night I cast on for a small multicolor project that will be the basis of a class I am doing next week at the Camas Creek Winter Retreat. It's interesting to be doing colorwork instead of cables. We'll see how I feel at the end of the project. I should probably confess that I spent more than a couple of minutes contemplating where I could add a small cable pattern to the project, but I talked myself out of it. Cables—as much fun as they are—do not belong on everything. 

And I still want another pair of socks, although I am leery of getting too many designs going at once. Three seems to be the magic number for me. Right now I only have one on the needles, so some time today will be devoted to planning and starting a few more—what fun!