the Investigator

My therapist this week identified my Enneagram personality type (type 5-wing 4) as one of those people whose issues tend to come from a sense of having a limited amount of energy (or to use the wizard analogy, "mana") available every day and thus actively struggle with figuring out how to allocate that energy without getting burned out too fast. On reflection, I'd say it's probably more-or-less accurate (I'm also apparently the type who questions personality tests like the Enneagram in the first place, but eh). I do find that I get "tired" really easily from a lot of things these days:

- planning meals
- figuring out what to wear today
- shopping for basic necessities and navigating stores
- physical activity
- not sleeping enough
- not sleeping well or in a bed/couch/sleeping bag situation I'm not used to (recalling that one time I tried hardwood floor and wound up not sleeping the entire night)
- sleeping too much and waking up with a headache
- sleeping enough but waking up groggy due to interrupted REM sleep
- work (but especially when I don't enjoy it)
- anything job-search related
- planning for things that don't have tangible end-goals/clear rewards
- budgeting and figuring out what to do with my money
- activities when I'm not in the "mood" for it
- talking to people
- mentally preparing to talk people
- talking to people who give me criticism even when I agree with them
- trying to justify the decisions and choices I make to other people
- all the things that occupy my mind and won't go away

Especially when those things are related to insecurities, which in my case leads to excess mental strain: doubt, anxiety, fear, paranoia, and all the extra energy needed to carry that load while doing normal everyday activities. That or the combination of mixed/negative emotions with having to perform in some manner is in itself by definition energy draining.

And when I run out of energy, I can't really function anymore. Out in public, I'm pretty much trapped or helpless if I can't get myself home for some reason. If I'm already at home when that happens, I might neglect basic needs like eating or sleeping, ironically-- well okay, it's not to the point of an eating disorder, but I'll admit that I've skipped meals before because of this. Otherwise, I'll just be unable to focus on anything I actually want to do at the moment. Like study. or read. or sleep. or leave the house. (see two posts ago about sobbing in my stairwell.)

And then I get paranoid or hung up about little things.

Case example: As I have to return my work laptop tomorrow, I decided to purchase a Macbook for myself for future personal work, for a number of reasons:

1. My current personal laptop is getting slow and unwieldy, and I mainly use it for gaming on the go anyway (although I'm also looking to refit it with an SSD soon in place of the CD-drive on it that I broke).

2. I'm used to the development environment on Macbooks cause of my work laptop (I'll admit, perhaps a bit spoiled) and prefer aspects of the user experience, like touchpad and keyboard features, over Linux laptops, although I still do remote work on Linux servers anyway. Bu in general, after working with Macs/Linux at work, I've found that I don't particularly enjoy coding on Windows anymore.

3. Other priorities include portability, RAM, having a decent amount of disk storage (for random reasons including running virtual machines and downloading stuff on the go-- so not feeling Chromebook here), and boot up speed.

4. I still have a $400 gift card from my old job that I haven't used yet, and I don't see myself buying other Apple products anytime soon.

5. A friend at Apple can give me a 15% discount.

6. I need to spend $4k within 3 months for the Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus, and I've pretty much already budgeted the eventual cost for the laptop within that range. (queue discussion on why I didn't get Reserve, but honestly, I didn't feel comfortable having a card with that high of an annual fee, and yes I'm aware of it being just $50 more cause of the $300 travel credit, but having no solid immediate travel plans or even intention to plan for a while, especially now that I'm unemployed. And I'm looking to cut down on spending for some time until I get a job, however long that takes.)

7. I'm going with refurbished cause it's a bit cheaper than new, but the quality assurance is even more strict for refurbs than new products, and I'm not looking to use the latest models anyway. Also, I've had a great experience with past refurbs direct from the manufacturer (like Nintendo's Wii U).

And I just wrote all of that on here now mainly because I had a convo the other day about wasting money on a laptop I don't "need" (and yet another thing to add to the list of choices that I have to defend in front of other people). I mean sure, I don't technically "need" a Macbook; if I really wanted to save the money, I could've opted for a much cheaper option. But I accept that I'm spending extra, in part because: of the added luxury, which I do actually want here; of the fact that it's within my means currently; and of my intention to not make any other major purchases for a while after this (unless the travel planning bug kicks in sometime in the next month or two, but that's what Sapphire + the points I saved in the last year are for).

But in the process of trying to justify all of the above to myself, I opened up another mental can of worms. I've been aware, especially more so lately, that I'm probably not saving as much or as optimally as I could be saving, and that I've made a number of stupid spending decisions in the past few months that have ultimately amounted to me wasting money (see tux rental that I didn't use during the double-wedding-weekend-madness and concert+music festival I didn't attend nor sell my ticket for because of planning mishaps and not emotionally being up for it). It kinda comes with my tendency to still make random choices on the fly in spite of all of the other planning that I actually do. Or rather, I tend to make stupid choices more often with regards to things that I don't actually enjoy planning for; especially when it comes to money, given that I'm not really motivated at all by the prospect of making or saving more money. But I'm still self-conscious of the fact that I could be doing more, because of the things that family and friends and ultimately society say to me about it.

And as far as insecurities go, it's not just money.

It's the driving decisions that I make on the spot (stop-no-I'm-going-no-never-mind-no-stupid-other-drivers-make-up-your-minds) when I can't think because I have a headache and people in the car are talking and this traffic intersection sucks and I am not generally assertive when I drive anyway nor confident in my driving skills given the long history of stupid mistakes I've made in the past months, no, weeks, no, days.

It's having to mull over the pros-and-cons of rolling over my 401k to an IRA and still not being able to come to a decision because I can't figure out if I'm actually going to take advantage of the Roth backdoor in the future, but the advisor from Morgan Stanley this week said not to keep your money in your employer's 401k because you lose most of the benefits that come with it once you leave your employer, and are lacking in investment options there. Not to mention that one month period in which my 401k was actually inaccessible because they were making a switch from JP Morgan to Fidelity; imagine if that were to happen again? (Apparently when Coca-Cola did it for their plan it took 8 months.)

It's running over and shattering a package that I was expecting because the stupid USPS man who mixes up my mail with my neighbors 10% of the time decided to leave it in front of my garage door instead of the front one, and I was in a rush running late to meet up with friends for dinner who came later than me anyway, and I didn't bother checking the foot-long driveway because I had just come home a few hours ago, wasn't expecting the package that soon, it was dark out, the package was too low/close to be seen on my rearview camera, and my usual view from the back of the garage was obstructed by my own car because my other tandem spot is now occupied by a friend's car for storage purposes; all that said even though I know I should've checked that the coast was clear anyway. And now the package sender isn't responding to my emails.

It's typing up long emails to my parents trying to justify and explain my views on Guantanamo and racial profiling and systemic racism in the police in the US because I couldn't articulate any of my reasons in front of them at the time and therefore came across as naive about the world, speaking only from perception rather than actuality, even though I know there is evidence to back up my own reasoning, just as I've already acknowledged to them that their views aren't completely unfounded either. But it takes time and research for me to actually put a real, non-BS argument together because it takes more energy to combat BS/misinformation than it does to generate it. And then I don't actually send those emails because ugh I don't really want to start another war anyway. (And then people ask why I bother.)

It's driving late to church again today because I woke up late for first service and otherwise have no concept of time when it comes to showing up for things I have mixed feelings about on a regular basis, only to decide yet again to ditch service altogether and go somewhere else. Today it was because the roads were closed for Viva Calle SJ, and even though I actually had instructions for an alternate route to church, I didn't feel dealing with the hassle of figuring out an unfamiliar route and wound up checking out Viva Calle itself instead-- starting around the neighborhood where I used to live 4 years ago for nostalgia's sake. And then walked along the bike route for two hours (one each way) just for the hell of it.

It's my recent spate of posts (including this one). Am I being too open about my problems on this blog right now? Am I giving away too much and just driving people away in the process? Am I just making myself out as someone to be pitied, someone who doesn't have it all "together" as much as other people thought, someone who just complains a lot without doing anything really tangible about it, someone who's just doing this for attention so that other people will pity him even though says he doesn't want to be pitied but secretly suspects he does on the inside? Will others (who I'm not as close to) even want to talk to me anymore after all this? Will they think I'm crazy or unhinged a little bit? Am I being vain for thinking all of this?

I make so many life choices on a whim because the amount of time and energy it takes for me to actually plan for things that I'm not good at drains me too much, and meanwhile people are pushing me on with advice that often contradicts with each other, and then THEY GET FRUSTRATED WITH ME ANYWAY FOR TAKING TOO LONG TO DECIDE (in caps because I got angry while typing it). At that point, I'd rather just risk making the stupid mistake and learning from the consequences rather than persist in uncertain confusion for much longer.

And then I'm still struggling with the question of why I still feel so perpetually frustrated all the time, to the point where I sometimes start walking around and talking to myself quickly with intense I-want-to-punch-someone-or-a-wall moments even though no one is there, like my brother does sometimes (minus the punching part but with similar energy) when he gets excitable and can't control it because of his disability. Just another little thing that we have in common.

In other words, life is okay. I'm still getting by, albeit slowly. I'm taking to heart this word I heard on the Liturgists podcast today:

When people attempt to shortcut or disavow the sorrow of emotional wounds, instead of expressing it, they might unconsciously harbor hostility or helplessness instead of forgiveness. They may experience more psychological harm. Experiments show that our intellectual, emotional, and even physical performance, can be affected by emotions denied breathing room.

And this part of the type 5 description that spoke to me the most:

The intense focus of Fives can thus lead to remarkable discoveries and innovations, but when the personality is more fixated, it can also create self-defeating problems. This is because their focus of attention unwittingly serves to distract them from their most pressing practical problems. Whatever the sources of their anxieties may be—relationships, lack of physical strength, inability to gain employment, and so forth—average Fives tend not to deal with these issues. Rather, they find something else to do that will make them feel more competent. The irony is that no matter what degree of mastery they develop in their area of expertise, this cannot solve their more basic insecurities about functioning in the world. For example, as a marine biologist, a Five could learn everything there is to know about a type of shellfish, but if her fear is that she is never going to be able to run her own household adequately, she will not have solved her underlying anxiety.

Dealing directly with physical matters can feel extremely daunting for Fives. Henry is a life scientist working in a major medical research lab:

“Since I was a child, I have shied away from sports and strenuous physical activity whenever possible. I was never able to climb the ropes in gym class, stopped participating in sports as soon as it was feasible, and the smell of a gymnasium still makes me uncomfortable. At the same time, I have always had a very active mental life. I learned to read at the age of three, and in school I was always one of the smartest kids in academic subjects.”

Thus, much of their time gets spent "collecting" and developing ideas and skills they believe will make them feel confident and prepared. They want to retain everything that they have learned and “carry it around in their heads.” The problem is that while they are engrossed in this process, they are not interacting with others or even increasing many other practical and social skills. They devote more and more time to collecting and attending to their collections, less to anything related to their real needs.

Thus, the challenge to Fives is to understand that they can pursue whatever questions or problems spark their imaginations and maintain relationships, take proper care of themselves, and do all of the things that are the hallmarks of a healthy life.

The struggle is real, yo.