The value of meeting other INFPs

As I mentioned last week I need to blog here more when I'm not desperately unhappy. Actually, having a blog as an imaginary friend to help you cope is probably healthy, if a little scary when I put it in those terms. But I'd like this to be more, something more generally interesting.

I want to share more good resources for INFPs. So far the one I've used most frequently is a really excellent Facebook group called INFP's Unite! It's really been remarkable to meet so many people who see the world the same way I do. I joke that it's the first time I've been on a message board where I wasn't the one making the long and involved posts. And I'm about to get into a verbal sparring match with a communist who feels my brainstorming about the idea of a company run by INFPs is "repulsive". What fun!

There's a pretty active INFP message board at Global Chatter: http://infp.globalchatter.com/messageboard/ . As far as I can tell, that site sets a cookie when you first visit to make it really hard to view any message boards other than your own type, so perhaps you should visit your own type if you're not INFP! But I haven't gotten involved there yet because I can imagine how much time I would spend.

I joined the mailing list at http://list.ambertides.org/listinfo.cgi/infp-ambertides.org , but then it frustrated me because the subject lines of the posts aren't marked. I really just need to set up a proper Google filter for those posts but I'm lazy.

Meeting other INFPs has been incredibly helpful to me. Actually it turns out one of my Web freelancing contacts is also INFP -- he announced this by asking, "Do the letters INFP mean anything to you?" which gave me a chuckle -- so we had a good talk about career stuff after that.

A fellow INFPer, Meyers-Briggs prayers, and more!

For work I'm learning about Google Analytics, and that's lead me to start checking these metrics on my own site to see who's out there reading this blog. One great thing GA lets you do is see those search terms that lead people to your site, and by running those same searches you can find some fun and quite relevant content.

Apparently a couple of people have found my blog partially using the search term INFP, which is awesome. Hi there, folks. One of the searches also led me to this post: cybette's blog: INFP = ADD = Depression. Very interesting stuff, and I like her hypotheses about different reasons why our personality type may correlate with depression and ADHD, especially this one:

So what causes depression? Stress (among other factors). Feeling the need to "fit in" a world dominated by ESTJ/SJ's, or at least a world where ESTJ type is encouraged (many U.S. presidents are ESTJ's, including George W. Bush). Also, a lot of gifted and creative kids are mis-diagnosed with ADD, simply because they are misunderstood.

Count me shocked, shocked!, that GWB would show up as a J. Anyway, it's very interesting stuff.

She also cited short "prayers" for each of the 16 MBTI types. Here are a couple:

• INFP: God, help me to finish everything I sta
• ENFP: God, help me to keep my mind on one th -Look a bird- ing at a time.

Pretty much, yeah.

Productive Thursday

I came in this morning determined not to repeat my unfocused yesterday. And mercifully, I can still do this for short periods of time. The first 1:15 of my day, I've been pretty focused, largely cleaning up some messes that have been screwing up our database.

I'm trying to quit a lot of the Web surfing (or, let's be honest, looking to fill my intellectual stimulation deficit) but I am letting myself blog a bit, obviously, and did let myself read these two posts from the law school dropout poker guy: Deep Thoughts Part I and Part II. It's not really about poker, more about how you assess what social value different careers produce. Good stuff.

But You want a truly worthwhile job? The guy from Triple-A I had to call to start my car in a bad neighborhood in -10 degree temperature when I had absentmindedly left my inside carlight on. The sewer inspectors who wade through other people's feces from 10pm til 6am so that you can flush your toilet in the morning. The city's electrical engineers who are literally on call 24/7, frequently dragged out of bed at 3am to fix the power lines the evening storm had knocked out. But I'm sure as hell not going to face the shitstorm that would result if I took my 2 ivy-league degrees and accepted one of those jobs.

It's really too bad this guy doesn't still blog, but perhaps he resolved all the issues he felt he needed to.

How the hell do you get a gig like this?

Christine Kane's tour schedule. Looks like she just goes around the country giving "Corporate Creativity Training". I mean, I sound cynical, but it's really a serious question, because I think I would love a career like that. So how do you do it? Get a PhD in creativity? Acquire years of experience becoming creative? I'm really serious. Anyone know?

I surfed over there because of an old link in my reader from the now defunct twentypercenter blog. I miss Max. He wrote some good stuff. I wonder why he took it down.

He linked to this post: How to live a life of quiet desperation. This one looks interesting, though I haven't read it yet: Wrecking your potential. And I might accept her challenge to list 100 things that delight me.

Coupla links to explore

While just googling , I found a couple of things of interest. Actually several, but i don't have time to explore it all right now.

• blogcatalog adhd tag -- I suppose this is no different than Technorati or any other metablog site, but I should keep an eye on those.
• What really caught my attention there, though, is: Is there such a thing as an ADD-friendly career? I'll have to check out her "Best of" post for 2007 too.

I'm sure there's much on the Web to be discovered; like anything, the trick is separating wheat from chaff. I know link posts aren't that interesting but hopefully i can help in that separation process.

This blog is just another link repository

I like the way this person thinks about work, boredom, ADHD, and how the American Dream often fails to live up to its promise.

On my better days i figure so many of us feel this way that someday, the dam will break and we'll just have to start creating institutions that let us do better.