Strength and Weakness

So I read this great post on Penelope Trunk yesterday about understanding what you want out of life and a career by thinking back to what made you happy as a child. It was a striking idea, especially after I read Joselle Palacios' response which was:



When I was young, I was a big pretender. I had 10 different stories going on in my head and I was always talking to myself and play acting. I was shy and quiet when
around new people but very quickly, I turned talkative and bossy. I also enjoyed convincing people to do and see things my way. I was attracted to friends who had big personalities, who also would lead me. There was often conflict but these were the people I wanted to be friends with the most.
I also enjoyed writing but I only like writing stuff that I could really envision in my head and eventually act out. I enjoyed reading and quiet time as well as running around outside and riding my bike nowhere all by myself.
What I think that tells me is, I’m introverted and need a lot of personal space but I also need to be a creator and around a lot of vivid personalities. I need my responsibilities to change regularly. I like to juggle a lot of balls at once and cannot be chained to a desk. Which is, unfortunately, what I am now.
This is such a good exercise. I always love these simple, powerful exercise you offer.

In describing herself, she described me to-the-t. I guess we aren't all as unique as we would like to be. But that's not the point. I was a dreamer as a child and I'm a dreamer today. My last boss told me that sometimes he felt I wasn't "present." I didn't really understand what he meant by it, but then again, my last cubicle job was a lesson in working in a position that is a "bad fit." I was an office manager, and it required me to be everything I'm not--that is outgoing and creatively administrative. My creativity does not extend to administrative roles.

For a long time, I'd been under the impression that I'd lost the little girl I used to be. The little girl who actually asked her Mom to tell her friends she was sick because she preferred to finish her book over playing. The little girl who used to come up with fantastical stories about other worlds, write tragic poems and draw abstract shapes to represent the flowers and trees that she couldn't capture realistically.

I was often unsure of myself particularly in large groups or among people I didn't know well. But, I was definitely moved with the sense that being shy, introverted, or just plain old not that pretty wouldn't matter if I was good at other things. I loved to dance and play music and would play songs over and over and over again to either learn the notes so I could play them on my flute, or to come up with the right dance move to fit that bar. In essence, I was a perfectionist when it came to music and language. These were the things that made me happy.

But as I got older, I allowed myself to become bogged down by ideas of what I "should" be good at doing. The things I "should" have been doing with my time. The person that I "should" be in order to be successful. In time, I lost touch with me. I relinquished my strengths in order to shore up my weaknesses. When someone would compliment me on something I did well,the only thing I could think about was what I did not do well. My focus was jacked. I was unhappy and lost. But, the little girl who I thought was gone--the girl who I had suppressed for so long--is still here. She would rear her head in all those moments when I couldn't focus on administrative tasks, or when I would have the overwhelming feeling that even as I was doing work, I was wasting time.

Now that I've begun to acknowledge her, well, in short, I'm happy. I finally feel as though I'm going in the right direction. And what I've realized is that, when you focus on what are you good at, and you do it well, you will find success. I have many strengths, and from here on out, I will no longer make them secondary to my weaknesses.

My First Post

Can I say how difficult signing up for anything is these days? It took me three attempts before I was able to correctly type those squiggly letters websites always make you decipher in order to confirm that you are indeed a person, and not a computer of some sort. Now, on to more important things. Namely, who I am and why I have started this blog--that is for the same capitalistic, nihilistic reasons that the other 7 billion bloggers have started their own. If enough people like you, and, I mean truly like you, there is money to be made and accolades to be had. My only problem is what should I write about? Should I tell you, the world, about my days? They're generally not that interesting. Should I tell you my thoughts on life? I'm certainly not under the impression that I'm experienced enough to write something particularly intriguing. How about I tell you about how I spent the last five minutes holding my nine-month-old son's shirt while he tried to crawl in various directions? It was actually quite hilarious, but I'm sure it won't be of much interest to some non-parents.

When you blog you reach everyone and no one at the same time. I guess it's all in knowing who your audience is. But I have too many interests....I like politics (at least since Obama came on the scene), marketing(if only to degrade it), media, psychology (I'm an INFP), anything baby-related, beauty, fashion, analyzing, over-analyzing, re-analyzing, reading, art, dance, theater, words, words, words. I love words. What it all boils down to is that I'm loathe to categorize myself, hence the blog title. It reflects me at my core, wide seemingly unrelated interests that come together in sometimes remarkable and sometimes unremarkable ways.