Good, Quiet Day
Sep. 22nd, 2004 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenWalt left before I even got out of the bedroom, but we'd said a mild good-bye the night before. I was glad that he'd come. John and I did a team-packing of Jet's lunch and that went fast, that way.
Jet was a little subdued going to school this morning, but he did quite well, all in all. When he asked me to pick him up and I said No, he just turned to the teacher and let her lead him away. He did just fine, the teacher says.
I had a mildly rough morning, as it was filled with meetings and one phone call that ate half a meeting. Then I went to lunch with three other people that were in the overrun meeting. The OUR center was having a benefit lunch with spaghetti, meatballs, and all the fixings. It was quite good and they raised a lot of money and cans of food, so that was great. It was fun to just sit and talk with people for lunch.
I spent the afternoon catching up on email, getting through a pile of small things (small rocks) and getting to none of the big things I have to do, still.
It's odd. I took the Strengths Finder survey yesterday, from Gallup, and found my strength themes and they resonated, so hard, I was crying by the time I'd finished reading all the descriptions. They are:
1. Learning -- Loves learning, though no drive for awards/degrees/expertise. Just the learning process itself is a joy. Technical, personal, physical, etc. It's all the same, just getting better from nothing is a fun thing. It also means, though, that I have no need to claim expertise in anything. I can let others be the "real" experts and get on with learning something else that intrigues me.
2. Developer -- Developer of people, finds a way to get them to really do what they want to do, "sets people up for success". (Wow.)
3. Communication -- Speaks, writes, hosts, presents, and explains things to people so that they get what is trying to be communicated and will change presentations, styles, etc. to fit the audience.
4. Strategic -- Peers at chaos and finds patterns. Takes a mass of possibilities and weeds out all the things that are too costly to pursue, and finds a high level direction through the details.
5. Achiever -- Every day starts at zero. Previous accomplishments mean nothing. It's a tenacious "what have I done today?" always whispering discontent at the accomplishments of the moment. This one's something of a double-edged sword, sharp as anything, but can quickly cut the bearer.
Alone, each facet is cool and some are mildly unexpected. If I had to pick a way to describe myself nearly none of these are at the top of my head (okay, yeah, most of the things that I would have picked would have been mildly negative). They're so much a part of me they were hard for me to claim or see. What blows my head off is taking them all together. They are much of the motivation for nearly everything I've done. I can actually match, now, when these were in play with how happy or how frustrated I was with a particular situation. Not just work, but with all aspects of my life.
Anyway. I spent some time absorbing and, yes, communicating all that. *grin*
Then John and I got Jet, went to the grocery store (with Jet on my shoulders for much of it), did minimal stocking up, and went home. I then drove off to Bonnie's and had an extraordinary massage. She'd been on vacation for a week, so it's been three weeks, and it showed. She commented, mildly, that I could really use going in once a week and I hated to but had to agree with her. It's a combination of no massage and missing the Rec. Center for the week it was closed. No physical activity AND no relief from outside sources makes for a very sore Liralen.
I should do it more often. John agreed that it would be fine with him, and he made a delicious dinner of a T-bone steak shared between the two of us, sauteed zucchini, rolls, and French Fries. Jet ate a whole plate of fries and then a whole plate of apples. Mono-food boy. *grin*
I ache a bit from the massage. I should drink more water and use my heat pad and rest...
Jet was a little subdued going to school this morning, but he did quite well, all in all. When he asked me to pick him up and I said No, he just turned to the teacher and let her lead him away. He did just fine, the teacher says.
I had a mildly rough morning, as it was filled with meetings and one phone call that ate half a meeting. Then I went to lunch with three other people that were in the overrun meeting. The OUR center was having a benefit lunch with spaghetti, meatballs, and all the fixings. It was quite good and they raised a lot of money and cans of food, so that was great. It was fun to just sit and talk with people for lunch.
I spent the afternoon catching up on email, getting through a pile of small things (small rocks) and getting to none of the big things I have to do, still.
It's odd. I took the Strengths Finder survey yesterday, from Gallup, and found my strength themes and they resonated, so hard, I was crying by the time I'd finished reading all the descriptions. They are:
1. Learning -- Loves learning, though no drive for awards/degrees/expertise. Just the learning process itself is a joy. Technical, personal, physical, etc. It's all the same, just getting better from nothing is a fun thing. It also means, though, that I have no need to claim expertise in anything. I can let others be the "real" experts and get on with learning something else that intrigues me.
2. Developer -- Developer of people, finds a way to get them to really do what they want to do, "sets people up for success". (Wow.)
3. Communication -- Speaks, writes, hosts, presents, and explains things to people so that they get what is trying to be communicated and will change presentations, styles, etc. to fit the audience.
4. Strategic -- Peers at chaos and finds patterns. Takes a mass of possibilities and weeds out all the things that are too costly to pursue, and finds a high level direction through the details.
5. Achiever -- Every day starts at zero. Previous accomplishments mean nothing. It's a tenacious "what have I done today?" always whispering discontent at the accomplishments of the moment. This one's something of a double-edged sword, sharp as anything, but can quickly cut the bearer.
Alone, each facet is cool and some are mildly unexpected. If I had to pick a way to describe myself nearly none of these are at the top of my head (okay, yeah, most of the things that I would have picked would have been mildly negative). They're so much a part of me they were hard for me to claim or see. What blows my head off is taking them all together. They are much of the motivation for nearly everything I've done. I can actually match, now, when these were in play with how happy or how frustrated I was with a particular situation. Not just work, but with all aspects of my life.
Anyway. I spent some time absorbing and, yes, communicating all that. *grin*
Then John and I got Jet, went to the grocery store (with Jet on my shoulders for much of it), did minimal stocking up, and went home. I then drove off to Bonnie's and had an extraordinary massage. She'd been on vacation for a week, so it's been three weeks, and it showed. She commented, mildly, that I could really use going in once a week and I hated to but had to agree with her. It's a combination of no massage and missing the Rec. Center for the week it was closed. No physical activity AND no relief from outside sources makes for a very sore Liralen.
I should do it more often. John agreed that it would be fine with him, and he made a delicious dinner of a T-bone steak shared between the two of us, sauteed zucchini, rolls, and French Fries. Jet ate a whole plate of fries and then a whole plate of apples. Mono-food boy. *grin*
I ache a bit from the massage. I should drink more water and use my heat pad and rest...
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 10:42 pm (UTC)- Intellection: Like to think, like mental activity.
- Input: Inquisitive, collector of things & information.
- Learner: Loves to learn.
- Context: Looks back to understand the present.
- Analytical: Challenges other people to prove their ideas objectively; likes data.
I'm not quite sure it registered with me as strongly as Myers-Briggs did, but that's mainly because there's so much more that's been written about M-B & Myers-Briggs was my first "wow" experience of taking a personality test and seeing descriptions that came fairly close to how I am, just never saw it put into words before.
I don't know that StrengthsFinder will have the same popularity because of their copy protect scheme (according to the reviews on Amazon) that the code which comes with the book can only be used once to take the test online.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-23 07:24 am (UTC)- The characteristics they came up with for me (& apparently for Liralen as well) were pretty much on the $.
- I liked that there were 180 questions; it took a while to get through, but with so many ?s its unlikely their results are being skewed by a couple of outliers (places where the answer to a question goes against the general trend)
- I also liked that a good number of the questions were not "obvious" as to what they were getting after. One of the problems I have with M-B is that too many questions it is clear what the quetion is measuring, i.e. "do you enjoy talking to people?" measuring extroversion, etc. This makes it easier to answer a certain way if in the back of one's mind, one has a preconception about how one "should" come out.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-23 10:28 am (UTC)I agree both about the sheer number of question and about the questions not being nearly as obvious as with most M-B questions. I can now, easily, skew the results of M-B any way I really want it to go, especially with a 20 question "test", so I never really know if it's really my real preferences, or just my preference on what I want to be classified as... Hee.
My M-B fit me when I first took it, but since then I've seen it change with my preferences. It's kind of nice to know that this won't change just because what I want changes, somehow it feels more... fundimental.
I also like that there are something like 55 million possible sets of five, with order... so no one's exactly the same. But the individual items are distinct enough to make for a good picture of what the tendencies will be.
I've also taken an AVA "personality vector" thing, which seems to go the opposite way of M-B...
Turns out, though, that there is a 100-question, professional version of M-B that's given with mild counseling on now to use it. it, too, costs money, but I do think it's the more accurate test. Companies do use it; but I agree that the general popularity may not be as high for these...
And, wow, it's cool to see your strenghts, and they really do seem to describe what I have seen in your actions. Keen!
no subject
Date: 2004-09-23 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-23 10:20 am (UTC)