Author: Nikki

I was sent a few e-mails about my last post,  (Thank you) suggesting that they mostly agree with my self-evaluation, however, I should find out my Myers-Briggs personality type, as it could give me a reason why I’m possibly maybe flipping to what is called the “Inferior function” in my personality in certain situations.

So, I did, and here are my results (There was an Enneagram Test in the same place as well):

ISFP – “Artist”. Interested in the fine arts. Expression primarily through action or art form. The senses are keener than in other types. 8.8% of total population.

http://similarminds.com/jung/isfp.html

So, I shopped around for some more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISFP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nines_(Enneagram_of_Personality)

I must admit, the ISFP personality page from the test site seemed to have a great many negative words associated with it. I can accept their “pocket definition” easily enough, I’m so not comfy with the extended traits page at all. More thought required there! However, the Wikipedia page is a lot more expanded and helpful… 🙂

As to the Ennneagram Number? Reading the potted and then the expanded Wikipedia descriptors, I feel that is pretty bang on actually, including that my Vice type (“deadly sin”) is sloth… I can be very unmotivated/unmoving if there is nothing that *has* to be achieved… Oh, and is anyone that knows me at all surprised at my varient? 😉

So, now I need to learn how this information will help me.

It’s been pointed out to me, that my communication style is somewhat argumentative.  This goes against my previous belief about myself that I’m not that combative, rather placid and easygoing in my communications.

I tend to like to choose words with care, and am very aware of what power they have… I love e-mail for this very reaons, I can pick and chose the words that come out of my fingers, go back ans revise, shape and hone them, so that they deliver 100% of my intent correctly

I’ve never been good at “on-the-fly-demand-of-me” type conversation – as a listener, I’m generally nodding and making encoraging noises to people.  When I have to speak about me an myself, I tend to leave gaps in my speech flow as I search for the correct words, that more talkative people want to fill with their own words.

So, to be labled as “argumentative”? The whole concept was puzzling to me. 

In the last few months, I’ve felt that I wasn’t receiving communication from the people I care about because of their styles conflicting with mine, or that they simply didn’t want to discuss with me the issues I needed information about… as we would start the conversation, then we’d seemingly tangent/get diverted, and the conversation would abruptly stop, usually with either silence and/or anger being directed at me by the other person.

However,  why this behaviour from others is occuring was both (finally!) described and then very blatently demonstrated to me last night.

It really shocked me that I’ve got such a negative and combative trigger programmed in my communication style when I’m seeking understanding or clarifications on points… That I’m the one derailing the conversations, and either turning them into a pedantic argument about the meaning of a word, or leaping in with a defensive or corrective comment to the other person, usually before the sentence is completely out of their mouth.

I have to resolve this issue, it’s ruining my relationship with T.  As yet, I’ve not a clue how to start though…

This post is about “Decorating” – I talked about it a little a while ago, how it “has morphed from doing a little sorting out and painting to make the place nicer for T and I to share properly, into actively rewiring the house as a pre-phase I action!”

Let me expand on these thoughts…

It was at the end of March that T and I had the conversation about him moving into my house and making it our home.  We both knew that it would take a bit of work, as I’ve said before, I pretty much pitched up in the House, put all of my stuff from various phases of my previous life down, and didn’t really sort it out.

What I really didn’t anticipate was how long it would take to get what seemed to be a simple decision sorted, and also the depth/scale of work that would actually be needed to do the job correctly.

When it was decided that we would start to decorate etc etc, it was rather necessary to get a large amount of “Don’t need it now” stuff out of the house again, either by storing it or disposing of it, either via Freecycle, the Skip or the charity shop.

So, what I had already unpacked got mostly repacked again…
I went through my paperwork and threw away so much of it it was untrue (in fact, I’m sure there is a box of paperwork in my storage unit that just needs shredding!)…
Rationalised my things, took clothes, nick-nacks, old bed linens, Cutlery, and all the other assorted random things that would be of value to someone else but not to me down to the charity shop…
T removed the Carpet from most of upstairs, chopped it up and threw it away bit by bit in the Estate bins…

Then, booked and took a week off work at the end of April with T to start work. We took stuff to the Storage Unit, and the “spare” Furniture to a Friend’s Lockup. The horrid horrid Ivy that dominated the Wall of the Back Garden got taken down & shredded, T sanded the upstairs Floors, I grabbed the Laminate Floor from Mum’s Garage to get it laid downstairs, we made plans about what needed to get done next…

That’s where we then stopped for 3 months…  With KF4 being a major reason why.  Life started cracking by at a too-fast fast pace, all of my spare (and not so spare!) hours were taken up with the KF Admin, whilst T started revising for ITIL practitioner exams (without actually making it clear until “later” that he was a) taking any exams anyway, and b) that this is had to be a priority in his life. That caused a large amount of friction I can tell you…)

July comes around, and The Friend with the lookup needs their space back, (which is fair enough, considering I’d said it would be for a month max!) so, I arrange the needed time off, a van etc etc. It then comes back to a house that doesn’t really have space for it, the bookshelves get dismantled, and the carcasses are sitting with the single bed in the corner of the living room, along with the flat-pack Metal Shed we bought in August to erect and store it all in…

Piled at the other end of the living room are the shelves from the bookshelves, a IKEA STEN shelving unit to get errected in the little room when it’s sorted, and some random bits of useful woods… from where the walls got dismantled in June.

The walls?  Dismantled? I hear you say… Yep, dismantled walls…

Why? Because, when I mentioned to my friend K that I was decorating, and was painting the big bedroom to try and motivate T again, he said “Well… painting it is fair enough, but given all the other stuff that really needs doing to make the building safe, isn’t that a little like polishing a turd?”

So, we embarked on a plan for rewiring. It’s needed, don’t get me wrong, the wire & fuse board is 50 or so, (I believe the house is vintage 1956) and the upstairs hall-light socket especially was unsafe (Lots of nice charred wood around that when we took it down!)

So, one June weekend, we ripped up floors, and ripped down walls… the walls being made of wood, not plaster.

In reality though, as K is my in the know rewire-er type dude, and his life has also taken a turn for the busy, progress on that is slow. We’ve had 3 weekends where we’ve all been free to put wires in, and although we need a final push on that, there are still 6 or so to go in, including 2 30A heavy duty buggers to pull, which are not going to be easy!

I mentioned a shed… I bought a 10’x8′ metal shed in August, after Freecycling Granddad’s Greenhouse. Reasons for this were many-fold, mostly however, so that I could stop paying for the storage unit, and get all the other stuff in Downstairs out.

However, T didn’t realise that Metal sheds do not ship with floors. The fact that we have to construct a solid base rather than just make the ground flat then lay the wooden Base&Floor on top threw him for 6, and so, although we got the groundwork sorted in early September, getting concrete into that has not. The weekends that we’ve so far been all been free to try to get this sorted? The weather has thwarted us BIG style.

This is a real sticking point in the plan, as without getting the shed built, we haven’t got the room to shift everything out to create space to work downstairs so we can put up ladders, and trunk out the walls to get cables and switches required installed.

So, we live in chaos, most of the stuff in the house (apart from the Kitchen) has no “home” to be tidyed into, so stuff is crowding in on us both in our room and all of downstairs, and there are holes in the landing & two of the three bedrooms. There is also a mother that stresses out big style every time she thinks about the project and then flaps at me (which I can understand, but I do wish she would deal with it differently, being yelled at is not on my list of fun activites), and a hole in my finances that I really cannot cover unless I either work 2 weekends a month OT (Which isn’t always available), or just don’t eat/have fun.

It’s all doing my nut in. BIG time.

🙁

Something I said 2 years ago: “Mind you, and from a totally personal perspective, is it really a humane thing that we make our terminally ill people effectively starve to death on painkilling drugs?”

A very close friend of mine has been sitting by his mother’s Hospital bedside for a week now, watching her die whilst “being made comfortable” by Morphine.

She’s 83,  has an inoperable fast-growing tumour that she is bleeding into and The Doctors cannot “fix” it because the drugs they would use to stop the bleeding will give her an heart attack.

She lost her Husband at the end of September, and my friend sat by his bedside with her, watching his Father die whilst “being made comfortable” by Morphine. 
He died (pretty much) due to complications of progressive heart failure.

His Father had said to him about 10 days before he entered Hospital that he was more than ready to go, just wished it was all over… I know My Grandfather said the same thing to me.  My Friend’s Mother said to him just other other day that she was glad that Her Husband was out of pain, but that she was looking forward to seeing him again soon!

I know that My Mum sat the same vigil with Granddad, and unless we wise up and put Humanity over Morality, I’ll have to do it with my Mum.

I hate that our Morality – “Thou shalt not kill” – means that our Social Construct cannot offer anything more than a long slow lingering “natural” death over inherent dignity.

After all, how much emotional pain does having to helplessly watch someone die over a course of days give the other person? How much extra emotional pain does it cause the person dying?

I’d say far more pain alround than being able to say to your loved one “Right, I’m dying, there is so much pain, it’s my time. Let’s get it sorted whilst I can still tell you I love you…”

Warning, this one is a littel bit ranty!!!

I seem to be a little bit “stuck” right now. I’ve not got a great deal of creative activities in life, and the all consuming decoration has made the house into a disaster zone.

A great deal of “My Stuff” has been in storage since the end of  May, costing me a week’s rent every month, that I cannot really afford to pay out.

I’m still knitting, which is a good thing, but my stash is in the storage, so I’m buying yarn rather than using up (Mind you, I’m nearly finished a new booga bag, after having lost my original to a washing machine accident… I don’t think I ‘blogged that sad event!) which isn’t that ecconomical.

I’m not dyeing, because all the equipment and the white yarn are in storage, and the house being a disaster zone means that even if I did have the stuff out, I’d not have the space to “play”.  I also didn’t have the money to take Fluffenstuff to IKnitDay, which is a very very sad thing, and the business is very stagnant right now. I haven’t had an enquiry since March I think, despite advertising.

I’m not really getting the time to play with my websites, because work is being far too manic… Fluffenstuff in particular needs LOTS of attention, as I did a WordPress/WP-ShoppingCart update to it in July which deleted all of the on-site pictures! So, even if people were surfing me, there’s nothing there for them to see!

Work itself is dull dull dull, not really giving me much brain-food, and is stealing far too many of my weekends to be quite sane, and sapping my energies ahead of when I do get time for other stuff.

The decorating has morphed from doing a little sorting out and painting to make the place nicer for T and I to share properly, into actively rewiring the house as a pre-phase I action! This necessitates having holes in the first floor floors & walls,  which wouldn’t be a problem, if you could take a decent run at it… but it’s being squeezed into free weekends, and the gods know that there are not that many of them about, especially when every other weekend is taken up with children, and the ones left over fit our social life and other commitments into them!

Given also that it’s my mate Karl who’s the electrickerly minded one and so far not many of his free weekends have co-incided with our free weekends to actually make progress, the holes have been there for about 4 months and you can see why I’m living in a rather depressing, non-inspirational situation right now.

This lack of inspiration and motivation generally turns into a downward spiral of inactivity on my part. ie, My Computer desk has become a universal dumping ground. It is getting very out of hand,  as there is nowhere else for the stuff to live, so in typical Nikki fashion, I’m ducking clearing it up at all, and so the situation is getting worse ad nausia.

I *need* to break the cycle… and I need to stop finding excuses to avoid doing so. It’s difficult though, very difficult.