a girl in the world

finding beauty, pleasure and grace on the road less traveled

I’m a type 7, what are you?

In high school, girl friends and I would obsessively take those “How great of a lover are you?” tests in trashy magazines like Cosmopolitan, Allure or Vogue.  Actually, we became hyper obsessed with Cosmo specifically, because it was racy, gratuitous and sexy – everything that we were not.  I was a real dork in high school.  Dork, dork, dork.  I chose to go to a school way on the other side of the city purely because it offered the International Baccalaureate program (kind of like A.P. but geekier).  It’s the kind of program that lets you take university level English, Chemistry and Physics during the 11th grade because it’s supposed to make a difference in your life.  It did not.  It just stole time away from things I would rather have done, like sports, art and music.  But whatever.  I digress.

According to Cosmo, I was supposed to be a passionate lover, an emotional girl friend and a sophisticated fashionista.  All at the tender age of 16.  I have no idea why we cared so much about these stupid questionnaires.  We’d take them during Math class and discuss during lunch.  Maybe it was some form of escapism.  Had I really french kissed enough boys to be able to determine my kissing style?  NO.  Had I had enough boyfriends to determine how I’d react to cheating?  Nope.  Had I cared enough about fashion to determine whether I was a Chanel girl vs. a Gucci girl?  Of course not.  But somehow, it made us feel normal – diagnosed into one of three possible types and that felt good.  It felt good to feel understood.  Aha!  I’m not crazy!  The magazine knows exactly why I act the way I do!  That describes me exactly!

And you’d think I’d outgrown this strange desire to be “classified” by some third-party quiz.  But no.  About a year ago, I became obsessed with Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) quizzes.  These were especially gratifying.  I’m apparently an ENFP (Extroverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving) type – led by emotion and intuition, an enthusiastic people person, dreamy and aspirational… blah blah blah.  I would forward some version of the free online test to everyone I knew, including the boy I was dating at the time (who is now my boyfriend).  Somehow, I felt that I could understand people more if I knew their type.  I’d start conversations with questions like, “What Myers Briggs type are you?  I bet you’re an INTJ.  Am I right?”.  I’d be shocked to find out that many people, most people, hadn’t even heard of the test.  Really?!  Why not?!  It’s the secret to discovering your true self!

Well, I was forwarded another personality test just a few days ago.  This one is the Enneagram Test and it classifies people into 8 different types.  I’m a tie between a Type 3 and a Type 7.  And overwhelmingly so.  You can score a maximum of eight points for any one type.  I scored a seven on both.  And I am actually a little concerned.  How am I two different personality types at once?  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Ying and Yang.  Am I fighting with myself?!  One type is success-oriented and pragmatic.  The other is variety-seeking and spontaneous.  While one necessarily requires focus, the other thrives on being undisciplined.  While one is status-conscious, the other is scattered.  How can I possibly be both?!  Equally?!  This is supposed to help me understand myself.  I do not understand!  Make me understand!

What type are you?

Fantasy travel trips that you can do now

If you haven’t already read The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris, I highly recommend you do.  Though parts of it can sound unrealistic at times, it will change the way you think about work, play and everything in between.  Among other ideas, Tim talks about the highly affordable lifestyle of taking mini-retirements while you’re still young, able and energetic enough to enjoy them (like, right now).  No matter what age or background, you don’t need a million dollars to spend a month in Thailand learning muay thai. You can do it for a fraction of what it’s costing you to rent your current apartment in your current city.  As long as you’re smart about exchange rates and differences in cost of living, hanging out for a few months in a new country is totally do-able.  I know this for a fact.

Fun with mirrors in Luca

After I got over the very difficult process of leaving my cushy job and severing ties to things like a lease, a phone plan and a gym membership, the ability to spend 2 months abroad (like in Argentina) became a reality.  I’m no millionaire.  And yes, income is and will become more and more important as the months stretch on but I know that taking time off now is a much easier thing to pull off compared with a few years from now when I might be married,  I might be thinking about kids, I might be committed to another job/business/venture.

Wanna learn to speak Argentinian castellano?  Or write kanji in Japan?  Or make home made pasta in Italy?  Don’t wait your whole life to experience things that you’ve always wondered about doing.  Life is a long journey and sometimes saving our dreams for later means they may not come at all, so while that desire is in your heart and while you’ve got the resources to do it, stop making excuses and just go! Go, go, go!

Imagine…

… renting a villa in Tuscany for a three month lazy summer.  Take fashion classes, learn art history, speak Italian.  On the weekends, take the train to Sienna and eat gelato in the middle of Il Campo, the square where the palio takes place.  Wander the streets of Florence and bargain for beautiful Florentine jewelry.  Discover wine.  Lots of it.

… a solo trip through Bali’s lush, tropical inland villages.  Take cooking classes, ride bikes down volcano valleys and spoil yourself with a $5 massage every single day.  And if you’re feeling up for it, hang out on the coast for a few days and learn to surf off Kuta’s famous shores.

… winter in New York City.  Harsh, beautiful, an urban wild.  Ice skate in Rockefeller Centre, explore the Guggenhiem, make snow men in Central Park.  Light a fire in an old flat in the East Village and relish the fact that the winter is only playtime for you, not forever.  Sometimes a new twist on a familiar season will help you see things in a completely different way.

… December in Brazil.  Hot, humid, sexy.  Milder than scorching January, it’s a great time to sample a tropical Christmas.  Learn forro.  Brave a Brazilian bikini wax before hitting the beaches of Rio.  And when you’re tired of the street dancing, hire a guide and rough it through the Amazon.  Come back a toasty, delicious golden brown.

… a life with no boundaries, with no rules, with endless possibility.  No lifestyle has to be forever and sometimes, change is good.  It helps us to figure out what’s important and eventually, after all of the running around, we realize that place is just place.  What matters is who you’re with, what you’re learning and how you’re changing along the way.

Go!  Now!  Make it happen.

The next next generation

When it comes to technology, I consider myself quite tuned-in. I read my daily TechCrunch, Valleywag, Boing Boing and Engadget. I’m an early adopter of most online services and I get really really excited about stupid geeky things like A.I. apps, open-source CMS offerings and start-up camps.  But in my old age, I’m starting to realize that I’m pretty damn behind.

An evening hanging out with my 24 year-old brother reveals that I’m a gaming dumbass (I mean, is it really necessary to have 20+ buttons on a PS3 controller?!), that I pay way too much money for digital music, and that primetime TV is oh so yesterday (with vlogs, Netflix, Hulu and YouTube, apparently there is no need for a TV).  And even though all of this makes me feel like a dinosaur in the tech universe, I figure my brother’s ability to do 400 things online at once and his ability to find bespoke mixes by DJ Tiesto for free can be attributed to the fact that I think he’s got some form of ADD.  The kid is just plain strange (i.e. he collected collections as a child, and once, he nearly died under a snow pile trying to make an igloo from the inside out).  Compared to normal people, I’m not so behind.

But then enters Avni.  Avni is the most delicious thing on offer this side of the northern hemisphere.  Her cheeks are a perfect blob of puffy pink goodness.  Her eyes are so big she can pass as an anime cartoon.  And she is so smart it takes three adult university graduate homo sapiens to keep her from establishing a dictatorship in the household.  She can latin dance with the best of ’em, creates beautiful table art with creative ingredients like yogurt, raisins and milk and she sings, improv style!  And as if all of this weren’t enough to whizz her past all rounds of college admissions, she is well-versed on the iPhone, YouTube and digital video capture.  She is two years old.

avnionswing
While over at Avniland last night for dinner, I couldn’t contain my shock as she thumbed through her favourite nursery rhyme, walked me through her favourite videos and practiced her vocabulary with flashcards of things like asparagus, helicopter and goat (I don’t think I learned how to say asparagus until I was 20).  All on the iPhone.  I don’t even own an iPhone!

When a two-year-old looks at a laptop screen and touches it to see if she can turn the page, you know instantly that her world is a completely different universe from ours.  When she wants music, instead of an instrument, she turns to YouTube.  When you take a picture, she knows instantly to walk over and view herself on the camera’s LCD screen.  And she knows, from a pile of many, which file on the iPhone is her favourite dancing video.  She is two years old!  TWO!  Next thing you know she’ll be tweeting her favourite toddler app marketplace via her iPad.  This is like a scene from a futuristic movie that didn’t get off the ground because it’s already so dated.

How do you even keep up with a kid like this?!  As a parent, not only do you have to hone your negotiation skills (because raising a two year old, I’ve discovered, is like being in the longest deal negotiations meeting of all time), your parental instincts, your patience, your perseverance, manage your energy, and practice prioritization, you now must also be a tech guru!  You must be well-informed, prepared and aware of how technology will impact your darling little baby.  And lucky for my friends (Avni’s parents), they’re both in tech.  What about parents who aren’t interested or tech savvy as it is?  How do you raise a child three steps ahead of you in this space?  It’s like an illiterate parent teaching their child to read.  Is that even possible?

Though I know a lot of it has to do with exposure and the home environment, the idea of a two year-old navigating an iPhone isn’t such a radical concept these days.  But as someone in their twenties, not yet a mama, and a suffering technophilia, I tell you, actually seeing this happen in person is still a sight to behold.

This world is changing and it’s changing faster than ever.  One year ago nobody checked into Cafe del Dogge on foursquare, the Kindle was for early adopters and YouTube live streaming was the new hot thing.  Six months from now Twitter will be an old fad, Facebook will have taken over the world, and heck, Avni might even be president!

Hi, I'm Denise. I'm a writer, artist and photographer. This is where I share what I'm seeing, learning and making.
Twitter


Subscribe



On this date