It's my birthday, I'll whine if I want to

Yes, I often turn to the internet to gripe, to add to the millions of yammering whiners who take to their blogs to silently talk to themselves about things that bother them that no one else will listen too. And I've been in a gripy mood lately. It's only since moving north that I feel as profoundly the change of seasons. The very hot moves in quickly, and you forget how very cold it usually is. Then the very cold comes back, and my body goes through it's usual unpleasant paces: sudden energy slow down, sniffles, anxiety, stomach revolution, chills. To live in August in Mass is to feel in constant company with a warm, sweaty -but jolly- companion. To live here in the cold is to be persistently aware of your mortality.

Speaking of which, I am 32 years old today. These sort of occasions wear thin over the years, with annoying feeling of obligation to celebrate fighting for dominance over the more comfortable instinct to keep it quiet and personal. Why do we bother celebrating every single year? Isn't every single day just another step forward in our march to the inevitable?

Why the long face, you ask? Because I've lately been extremely aware of the fact that everything in life involves hard work. Maybe there will come a time in my life when my career is self-sustaining, my social life builds upon itself in ever-expanding circles, my wealth no longer needs increasing, and even the house cleans itself. Fat chance. From infants who must learn to self-regulate and feed to elders who must bring themselves to confront the end of life, there is never a time when we are not working for our most basic needs, not to mention our material hopes and social and professional dreams.

There is a flip side to this. If we must always work, we must always challenge ourselves, always putting ourselves in the position to grow, learn, mutate, adapt, and reinvent. None of that comes by just rolling out of bed and wondering what the day will bring.

My fear is that work is not instinctive for me. As an ENFP, I dislike routines and schedules, and am better about visualizing a big goal than setting down to do the work that would bring about that goal. I wonder why I find it so difficult to drag myself out of bed for my job, why I fear the very project that I am putting together, why I feel entitled to a circle of friends when I evidently haven't found a way to break the ice and form new bonds here. Put that in context with winter doldrums, and you've got your moody birthday girl.

I go through these cycles. I was in lonely despair in Rome when I hadn't made enough friends after 2 months. The situation fixed itself within weeks. Here in the colder new world, things move more slowly. I remember feeling this way a year or two into my life in New York, which is not known as a place to waltz into companionship. I still do my work, my many different personal and professional goals, and I believe that just by knowing what they are, I will achieve some semblance of them. I still do yearn for the stability I believe I will find a few years from now: A longterm place to live for the first time since childhood. Steady work. Family. It's the goals that keep me working, and even when I know that 'stability' exists only in myth or in memory.

So if you think life is a book, then you're on the same page as the deconstructionists. If life is nothing, you can become one with the zen Buddhists. But if you think life is work, do you go hang out with the socialists?

ENFP! Don't you wish you were me!

Recently, my department holed up in ye olde local convention center for some old-fashioned corporate team-building. We got to eat candy, watch PowerPoint, and use big words like 'positioning' and 'leverage.' It was just paradise. After a few humiliating ice-breakers (in which it was revealed that I was the only one in a room of 54 people who had never attended a Red Sox game) we settled in to a number of exercises surrounding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

In preparation for the retreat, we had all taken a multiple choice exam that sought to find our innate preferences in certain areas. The test determines how you are energized, how you perceive information, how you make decisions, and how you interact with the world through a series of repetitive questions (Do you prefer to plan or to be spontaneous?) and word pairings (spontaneous vs. planned). Many businesses use it. I wondered how accurate it is. Really, if your employer asked you, "Do you prefer to work on a task systematically or do it all last minute under pressure," how would you answer?

But then, I found myself. I'm an ENFP type, and there are others out there just like me. It means that I am extroverted, intuitive, feeling, and perceiving. Here's a brief description:

Warmly enthusiastic and imaginative. See life as full of possibilities.
Make connections between events and information very quickly, and
confidently proceed based on the patterns they see.Want a lot of
affirmation from others, and readily give appreciation and support.
Spontaneous and flexible, often rely on their ability to improvise
and their verbal fluency.

I think it sounds nice! Other notes are in adaptability "blooming where they are planted," "a zest for life that draws others to you," and enthusiasm and energy to start new things. These traits have their flaws too. I can start new projects, but have trouble finishing them. I tend to overextend myself, and can lose perspective by focusing on one unimportant detail that can "become the central fact in their universe."

It was nice to get this perspective around now. Now, at this very witching time of year, I routinely feel depleted. Every summer I forget that cold weather even exists, and every fall I am rudely reminded. In New England, cold weather returns like an unexpected and brazen house guest. You a have a few lingering warm days, then one morning you wake up and you can barely coax yourself out of your covers. I usually get a little sick, and my energy slows down as my blood thickens from the cold. I'm sure my gloomy feelings have nothing to do with my upcoming birthday.

It's a shifting of gears until I can find some fresh energy and refocus, remembering how I like the winter light, especially when enjoyed from a comfortable chair indoors with a cup of tea. But for now, I'm just thinking that I won't be able to open the windows for eight months, and that I should go destroy my little vegetable garden before it turns into a frozen mess of wilted greens.

Time to draw on that ENFPower!!!