Before I go ahead and introduce (late, as usual), the GAMBLE book for March, I am going to answer another one of your questions in my blog fodder exercise.

Bub and Pie asks (in her first question, I will get to the second in another post):

What’s your Myers-Briggs personality type?

I took the M-B test so long ago I wanted to retake it to answer the question.  The result, however, has not really changed.  I am a rather entrenched INTJ.  And, upon reading some of the descriptions, I would say that the characterization is spot-on – read them and you get a painfully accurate description of my personality.    As a quick illustration, when asked, at the age of 5, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I responded without hesitation “A scientist”.   What am I today?  A scientist.  I am a WYSIWYG kind of person.

Unfortunately, the place I have always struggled is interpersonal relationships.  I have heard that first impressions upon meeting me are of a rather cold and distant person.  When this was pointed out to me more than once, it came as a bit of a shock.  I will admit to being shy and reserved, but it was never from a disregard for people.  I am just not at ease in social situations and respond by keeping to myself – mainly for a fear of making serious social faux pas.  The great irony is that I create the situation I try to avoid.  This is compounded by the fact that, while I enjoy company and good conversation, I am a person who has a deep need for periods of solitude.  When my situation makes this impossible, I simply retreat into “mental solitude” in self-defense – I just “turn off”.  What, to me, is purely overload-avoidance, on the outside looks like a snub.

While I am not incapable of understanding other people’s pain, I am often at a loss on how to appropriately respond.  My initial instincts are to try to “fix it”, when some things simply cannot be fixed.  Simple sympathy is something I have had to “learn” because it always seemed so inadequate to offer.   Likewise, praise is something I have had to learn to give, not because I am an unappreciative person, but because my satisfaction is internally-derived.  It simply took years for it to occur to me that external recognition was something people really needed to feel they did a job well.

In short, I am a social cripple (probably the root of my obsession with autism), but I am also horribly self-conscious about it.  My only saving grace is that I am an useful social cripple.  Despite an astounding lack of original imagination, when you show me a destination, I WILL get you there.  Long term planning is my element, and the more challenging the better.  And when we get there, you can have all the credit, because it’s the accomplishment itself that makes me happy, not the recognition.

You just have to put up with me in the interim.