Thoughts

Still waiting to hear news about the old company I used to work for - I'm due to some money and dispite promises to contact me over the weekend there's still no news. So I had a chat with Alan, a former colleague of mine from those days, someone I used to be really good friends with. And once again I felt the sting of missing someone dear, and we were just chatting about life and families, and of course sci-fi and other geeky stuff, all very important in their own little ways.

In the midst of all that, I did manage to send two job applications - I'm still going through the motions although I've practically lost my hope at this point. For one reason or another, my services are not needed and I don't know if there's a way over it. At least if I was talking to someone... but as long as my applications don't even deserve "no thank you"'s I can do nothing but grit my teeth.

Life feels better though - one night last week we had a "what do you want from life" kind of conversation with Dragon which has kind of cleared my head. It's become quite clear to me that my life is now going into a very different direction than it was, say, a year ago. I'm not quite sure when this change started - possibly year or two ago, but it has certainly started to take shape within past six months or so. For example - I took that Personality Defect Test like most other people, only to discover that it thought I was a hippie (42% Rational, 71% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 28% Arrogant.):

You are the Hippie! Characterized by a strong sense of extroversion, irrationality, gentleness, and humility, you no doubt frolic through fields preaching peace and love to all! You are probably either very spiritual or needlessly paranoid about "the man", like most hippies, as a result of your focus on intuition and feelings over cold, brutal logic. You are also very, very social. And like any hippie, who would have no qualms about hitchiking across the country just to meet some interesting people, you too love to interact with others, even complete strangers. Because we know most any hippie is peace-loving and humble, it stands to reason that you, as well, are terribly gentle and humble, almost to the point of revulsion. Your carefree attitude of peace and harmony is probably very, very sickening to realists or cynics or anyone who isn't a hippie, to tell the truth. In short, your personality is defective because you are overly emotional, extroverted, gentle, and humble--thus making you an annoying hippie. And you listen to psychadelic rock and smoke a whole lot of pot. Okay, maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised if you did.

My first thought was - I'm so not a hippie, I'm a Haughty Intellectual like Orava or Moira. Then I read the description again, and while I still deny smoking pot and listening to psychedelic rock, it's not that far from how I view myself these days. I used to think that knowing everything and learning all possible information was key to self-fulfillment - I was and wanted to be a scientist, rational and cool-headed.

But to tell you the truth, most of the time I was actually guided a lot more by my emotions than I am these days. I would get angry easily and get into heated conversations about things that weren't really that important. In fact, when I was trying to do the test trying to think how I was thinking maybe three or four years ago, my result was the psycopath - opposite of the hippie. I probably went a bit overboard with the answers - as I absolutely deny that analysis - but it gives me some kind of an idea of where I've come from.

I think now my goals are more inner goals about self-improvement - how to become a better person more than how to become smarter. It's helped me that I haven't been working - I've had the time to be with myself and re-assess my priorities. I'm thinking about doing things I would have never ever admitted to before, and I'm not actually afraid. I also feel more stable, emotionally - I'm stronger, calmer and more in tune with both my mind and my body. Feels like I'm taking the right steps.

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