Beyond Rivalry

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Thanks for reading! Happy New Year!

My blog and I have parted ways on the Myers-Briggs personality analysis. I've tested as an INTP for many years now. This blog, on the other hand, is apparently an ISTP. You can test any blog here (their first language seems to be Swedish).

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment and are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like to seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

From Dave at How to Save the World, this descibes my process much of the time:

"The coined term (by Barbara Ganley) is 'slow blogging', but I much prefer the term my friend Chris Lott uses: 'mindful wandering'. [I like both.] The idea is to see blogging, which is really just a new way of recording your thoughts in a diary, as a meditative practice, taking the time to ponder the meaning of what you're reading, thinking and writing, letting your mind meander in thoughtful and creative ways to 'make sense' of it. I find that some of my best blog posts are those I've stopped and restarted several times, allowing time for thoughts to percolate and new ideas to emerge."

For me, blogging has become primarily a way of seeing and expressing connections among various things I read, think, experience, feel, desire, do.

I'm computer-free for a while, off on a vacation, so while I'm away, I've scheduled posts of some of my favourite quotes and suchlike. Enjoy.

I'm away until at least 18 August. Beach photos when I return!

I've been sick all week. Hope to blog again soon. Thanks for checking.

I'm away this week, back on Saturday. See you then.

I have some stuff I want to write about but can't settle in to write it yet. I've been a baking fool for the last week, though.

One posting will be a review of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, which I found thoroughly engaging and readable as a novel and full of ideas to think about. I want to talk about some of those ideas. (Thanks Rachael, for reading it so we can talk about it!)

Another will be a posting of the poems I choose for my bookgroup meeting this week. Each December, because of the heightened seasonal busyness of some members, we have a cookie exchange and instead of reading a book we choose a few of our favourite poems to share with each other. In past years I've chosen Yeats' Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Wallace Stevens' The Snow Man, Rumi's Out Beyond, ee cumming's since feeling is first, and probably something by T.S. Eliot (Ash Wednesday, most likely) and Dylan Thomas, maybe Nikki Giovanni or Muriel Rukeyser.

This year, I am thinking of reading Stepping Backwards by Adrienne Rich, if I can read it without crying, which is doubtful, especially as I stumbled upon it at Gil Bailie's website; he found it in an audio file read and left behind for him by his wife when she was alive.

I'll be back to posting soon. For now, I'm spending most of my computer time updating booklists -- recently finished adult crime fiction, children's historical fiction, children's bibliotherapy, and now only about 30 more lists to go! 

Don't forget to feed an animal today, and if you want more reason to care for critters, read this elephant rescue story.

And watch out for barking spiders! :-) 

I updated a previous post (here) after I got to thinking about the possible incompatibility of the idea that we humans have a strong tendency to comform and the idea that when someone has different views or tastes from us, we assume we're right. Could just be a paradox, but perhaps both responses derive from the same underlying basis.