Finding Yourself - A Walk in the Park: The16types Edition

[uniden]

Finding yourself is apparently as easy as a walk in the park. Hah. No not really. But have you read the SLE Thinking thread? That post in that thread was EXACTLY the kind of thing I was hoping to read when I first joined the forum, and now I want to do something like that as well. EII Thinking. And maybe the others here will find it helpful too. And maybe join. I should disclaimer that I will not be able to make my own impressions of my own thinking nearly as clean and logical as Herzy did in that thread. Maybe I'm small minded but I figure it inevitable that an EII Thinking impressions would be very personally colored. So

EII Thinking

I took three Long Walks. One after work, one before work and one when I had nothing in particular going on. After work was disaster. Work had messed up my mentality so bad I was 4 layers deep within the rabbit hole that is myself before I managed to pull myself out. Informative disaster though. Still no hurry to redo it. Before work turned out just to mostly be a primer for the Walk I did in the state park. I'll start, though, with the first walk. The work disaster walk of depressive thought. Again and especially for this walk it won’t be written anything like the SLE Thinking one but after we get this Fi disaster out of the way we can get into some more detached thinking.

Anyway, I think from the Bad Walk I figured out why EIIs got such a reputation for... just completely shutting people out and generally being hardasses. EIIs... at least for me... have a lot of trouble letting go. Unless! Unless they label that person as a Baddie; then it's easy! And what do you do with Baddies? You shun them of course. Until they come crawling back asking for forgiveness (not many do). You don't see it yet but it's all too clear to me the perverse incentive system in place here. This gets super tl;dr how I figured things worked this way. So you can skip this if you just want the cliff notes.

 

Let’s say there’s this cool group. You think what they’re doing is pretty rad, and you want in on it. So you join and end up putting a lot of your energy into the things they do. You invest. Then… there’s a falling out and you have to separate. Bad feelings abound. When you had first joined these were all good dudes to you. Now what are they?

On this Bad Walk my Fi mind brought up three groups of people and their respective ring leaders. Two of these groups were from way back—god years ago now—and still the memories from that time are miserable. One group was extremely recent. Four months ago. Objectively the recent group put my life in far far more turmoil than the other two. The other two were essentially just internet drama lite. Why can I let go of the recent guy so easily? My Fi head went to work.

I naturally found myself digging into the bad, recent guy’s past. My memories of it. This guy—like the other groups of people—I thought was a good guy. But… he’s not? Fi sought out the answer. There were key events—some even papered over—that my mind brought up immediately. Like it was ready and waiting for me to just ask. I recalled things from my childhood like how I overheard a conversation from my parents about him. How he had, like, 12 accidents. All not his fault, and on the 12th the judge was like fault or no I’m taking away your license on your next accident. Hmm. Or how when he was younger and working retail he’d charge customers $5 for gift wrapping during the holidays. That company did not offer gift wrapping. Hmm. And he’s always been kinda bilking my family for handouts. But after the Incident, when he decided to get rid of us, it turned downright fraudulent. Forgetting to pay the bill and trying to pin the penalty fee on my mother. Turning off her cable but still charging her for it. Charging her for more than was on the bill.

A picture formed. A saw a guy who would do what it takes for the extra buck while making sure he can never be caught on the wrong side of the law. Someone always just short of money. I saw some similarities to myself. Maybe a few differences in upbringing, moving around some guiding morals and maybe I could’ve been a lot like him. But no. He’s cheated random people who might be in no better spot then him, cheated my mum and threw a temper tantrum at her. This guy was trash. I could let him go and never look back.

The other two groups though? Jeez. I don’t know. They were okay dudes doing cool things who just happened to decide to not like me. That sucked. But there was an easy way out. With a bit of jiggery and pokery I could just mentally label them as Baddies and be done with it. Eh. I see how that makes things easier. But, digging down with that Fi and jazz you come up with nothing. Feels bad. Well I could lie. But I never really did much lying—to my detriment—so why should I start now? I’m all about the detriments. Shitty dogs.

Eh if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s these things come in phases. This’ll pass. Lazy housekeeping, as I can see it anyway, just builds up bad mojo under the rug. I see the Fi here was trying to identify the guiding force to figure out why someone did what they gone and done. What pushed them into it. Or attracted them.

Alright, that’s the shitty coping mechanism in the nuggin. Some people really are crap and they do deserve to be cut loose. But it’s too easy to get trigger happy doing that to anything that hurts. Too easy to label anything that looks like a character flaw into something bad or no good. Well. No one said living with this function was gonna be easy haha. But I can easily see ho someone can succumb a bit too much to this temptation to make the hurt feel less personal.

All said I stuck it out till the end of the Walk. It musta gotten pretty intense mentally in there because I noticed the few people around were giving me a berth. At this I also noticed my gaze locked staring at a sharp 30 degree angle. I’d returned to the physical realm.

Heh yeah that walk was almost entirely mental and almost no physical. Walking an area I was so familiar with I barely had to pay attention to get around. So I think for some results I needed to go someplace I wasn’t familiar with. Outdoorsy places. There aren’t really any trails anywhere close so instead I hit the biggest state park I could find. Wow I hadn’t done this in a while. There are those strange birds again at the ponds. And, uh, a couple school busses full of children. I thought I had driven far enough away to get away from all of them but okay this is fine.

I took 5 different routes through the park. My mental default state was definitely internal and not externally focused. So it would be more accurate to say when my internal focus would pop out occasionally rather than splitting it by percent cause it’s almost all mental. My first route through the park I noticed what drew my focus out was little bits of information I had learned about my surroundings. Like any bit of Te I could recognize out there (oh that’s pretty long a flowering grass maybe? Hey that’s a dicot plant. And so is that. And another dicot). My gaze scanned around the horizon while I was still getting used to the place. Noted the kind of people there and felt for a, hm, kinda bubble around them. Like the kinda psychological space they took up on the trails (lots of well-to-do older Asians here. Those two are sitting on a bench there give them a berth. Oh that trail goes awful close to that group of kids do I really need to go through that? Hmm). Also at this early stage of the walk I even perked up and noted where the sounds of birds and nature were coming from. But my attention would retreat back inside where I was mentally analyzing stuff.

By the 2nd and 3rd routes though the park my thought processes were being internally dominated. I was getting all Te’d out. Less and less to note out there (Dicot. Another dicot. Dicotdicotdicotdicot MONOCOT. Haha okay we’re done here.). The kinds of things I internally analyzed was how past conversations went. How I and they felt before and after. How future situations might work out. What kind of picture of a person was a getting from someone. Like why were they doing the thing they were doing. Example situation:

oh Ricky just gets overwhelmed easily. Especially when it’s a bunch of customers he can’t tune any of them out and it’s just too much so he freezes up and gets super stressed. That’s going to be a problem with Michael cause Michael doesn’t like doing electronics work and Ricky gets avoidant of that kinda work when he’s stressed.

Like with my Dark Walk this one seemed drawn to finding what drives someone. Why they do what they do. What do they need to function? This is what I think of Fi as. Awareness of what attracts and rebels a person. Dig deep enough down the thought hole that seems to be how my thoughts were directed. By the end of the 3rd routing I had almost tuned out my surroundings. I’d figured out how to walk around without really paying attention. My gaze was transfixed to the ground ahead of me. I almost didn’t noticed someone had weedwacked some flowers ahead of me until I was almost on top of the flowers.

By the 4th and 5th routes though I was getting tired. Mentally and physically. I noticed myself here taking note of random things externally again as a way to perk myself up. Spinning off some funny little tangent from those observations occasionally. Spurts of Ne to start new lines of thought or jumpstart thoughts that got stuck in a rut.

HMM that other guy is squinting at me but the sun is in my eyes not his. Nefarious??? Probably just Asian. OH. That pack of shirtless teens were all running together but now it’s just the guy and girl HMM. Oh I found the rest of them they’re all tired out and just walking. Hah well that one guy is showing them he can keep up with her at least.

My gaze was more sweeping than fixed when I was doing this. So in this walk to me most of the action happened on an internal set I had built up in my mind. Watching how things played out and may play out. This probably sounds pretty alien to an extravert sensor. The surroundings were all just in the background not really focused on. Fun though I definitely needed to be someplace new to identify some of this stuff.

[Jake]

Hmm, interesting. I just might have to do this one of these days!

[Pookie]

I think the term finding yourself is misleading. You are yourself, what you do. Changing yourself is about setting goals. I feel that introspection hinders the effort altogether.

[rougerogue]

Hmm, interesting. I just might have to do this one of these days!

You've never been on a walk?



jk jk

[Jake]

You've never been on a walk?



jk jk

I tend to just float above land... I thought everyone did that? Maybe not...

[uniden]

Hmm, interesting. I just might have to do this one of these days!

Do it now!

[Chae]

Can you link the SLE thinking thread? Thanks in advance!

[Stellafera]

Hm, might try this sometime, although I never really can lose myself in the moment when I go on walks. It's impossible, it's a "don't think of the elephant in the room" situation. If my purpose for the walk was to pay attention to my thought processes I'm going to be thinking about my thought processes the entire time even when I'm thinking about other things to avoid thinking about my thought processes. I guess that says something in and of itself.

Last year I did try taking walks and keeping a journal for a bit, so some excerpts from that might be more "honest" than a recent attempt:

Journal Entry:
Okay, so even in my rainboots, traveling in my now very muddy little nature zone was... not my smartest move. Even my hands [spot of mud on paper] are muddy now. And my pants. And also I forgot bug spray. Thanks mosquitoes! A lot more visitors here today. The mud was full of animal tracks, and several runners passed me by. I guess it's a quirk of mine that despite being very interested in the aesthetics of fashion, etc., I've never been overly fastidious. In the first place, I'm too clumsy to be tidy, but it's also that I've never found mud and bugs gross. I'd eat a cricket if it was thoroughly cooked. Maybe sauteed with onions? If I were to assign a suitable fashion style to this forest, it'd be something very ruffly. Forests around here aren't exactly sleek. And I'd incorporate brown, of course. This forest resembles a lot of [town]'s color pallet in general, actually. I'd describe [town] in bright green, colorful sky blue, and, uh, concrete. Okay, it's not perfectly idyllic.

Journal Entry:
It's warm and sunny and I HATE it! All these bland summery blue shadows and diluted lemon highlights make me want to pull my hair out. It looks like my favorite log to sit on got shattered by the rain, so I'll crouch down inste-oh, that's actually kind of nice, the lighting from here. That dead broad daylight looks much better backlit through leaves. It's late afternoon, so the angle helps...Will it continue to look this bland for the rest of the journal? I might start diving into non-nature topics on later visits if it's like this. It's sad that the bad weather made me lose out on the flowers and scenery of Spring this year. My mind feels antsy. I want to get back to work. I have a lot to do. And summer is so, so ugly. I'll go head back home.

Journal Entry:
I was in a rocking mood this visit, so I composed some rocking melodies on the fly! I don't know why I always seem to sing when I'm alone other than that it's fun. I'm not in a particularly analytical mood, so heck, I'll roll with that. Other cool things... well, there was a snake on the path into the forest. Snakes are awesome. Although to be perfectly honest, I did jump back a bit when it slithered off into the bushes. I mean, I had no way of telling whether or not it was poisonous. If I knew it was non-poisonous for sure, I probably would've sat next to it. I wore a black baseball cap this visit because it always puts me in a funky mood.

Journal Entry:
I'm in one of my workaholic moods, so not much smelling the roses. Walk around. Crunch dirt underneath my boots for the satisfyingly gritty sensation. Look around. Yep, the forest is overgrown and blue and grey. Looks good. Pace some more. Crunch crunch. Repeat. After my insecure drama from yesterday [referencing an entry with a lot of personal details I don't really want to share], I find myself more irritated by the presence of other humans than normal. There was no one in the forest today, mind you, but there were obviously some people walking their dogs around nearby and such. I resented the human presence. No wonder why people living in large cities are stereotyped as rude; they have to spend all of their "alone time" around other people. And this would especially be the case in cities that rely heavily on public transit like New York City. On the other hand, everyone I interacted with in NYC was nice, and nothing about this theory explains the stereotypes about L.A.

Journal Entry:
The forest was like a cathedral of light. I'm not particularly religious, so perhaps I'm missing something here, but why are so many American churches so ugly? They're often windowless and smell of office supplies and cat pee. How do you feel the glory of the almighty while starting at off-white carpet floors? This is what a church should be like. The soft pastel light over the bunnies in the grasses. The aggressively brilliant light bursting through the canopies. This forest trail is entirely artificial, but even I can't help but feel a vague spiritual tingle about the drama of light playing out over the shades of green. It's amazing how just a mile's space can look so grand. Godly, even. If I were to worship, I'd prefer to do it outdoors, where I could truly appreciate all the world has given to me. Amen.


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Some aspects of my thought process read very similar to Uniden's, but I seem to reference my internal state significantly more as an aspect of my thinking.