A Happy Rant, For a Change...

I am so happy. It all started 29 hours ago (allowing for daylight savings). I grabbed a book that Steph checked out from the library and, in an effort to avoid doing anything I needed to do, began to read about organizing my life more effectively. Yes, I found it humorous as well.

UNTIL IT CHANGED MY LIFE!

There was a quiz that you take in the beginning to ascertain what "brain style" you have. This isn't a "you're a blue" or a "you're a melancholy" or whatever else they have to segregate your personality. This was specifically meant to show you how your brain reacts to the managing of time and, well, stuff.

I have an Innovating brain style.

And then I read the most eye-opening honest 16 pages about myself. It was crazy because there is a mental me (which sounds awkward) but then there is a action me (also awkward). These are terms I have created for this blog. In my mind I know the exact right way to organize my time and efforts to be the most effective, blah, blah, blah.

But the action me (the one that matters) NEVER follows through.

I spend A LOT of my time, every day, feeling like I am a failure because I just don't get you normal people. I don't get 9-5 jobs, I just don't get how you manage to avoid doodling random story lines for three hours every day, I don't get how you manage to be... normal.

Well, what this book taught me is that I am weird. I am completely different than 80% of the population when it comes to what motivates me to get moving and the way in which I process and prioritize.

And that isn't an excuse but it isn't irrelevant either.

So I am embracing my weirdness instead of fighting (very ineffectively) against it. I am the kid in the classroom that understood what the teacher was saying in 5 mins and then spent the next 45 daydreaming about Matt Damon and the movie I was writing at the time. And then I didn't catch the assignment or the second half of second, more complicated aspect of the lesson.

I am the girl who was crazy awesome at every job because the only way to keep myself from crying from boredom was to give myself impossible goals, which I would reach, much to my delight and surprise. And then I'd be bored again. So I wouldn't go. Almost every employer I have ever had has said a version of this to me at some time, "If you would just come to work regularly you would be a supervisor by now." To which I would... quit. Or just not show up. And get fired. Mostly I quit but I have been fired once or twice.

I am the girl that writes blogs at 2am.

BUT I am also the girl who has a million ideas in my mind at every second of the day. I am the girl that forces herself to keep reading the book she is reading even though she all of a sudden has an idea for an awesome story. Why? Because normal people finish the books they are reading. Normal people doing things in order.

And yet...

Now that I have embraced my non-normalcy I am FREE. I was reading a book last night and randomly thought I should write some articles for work. So instead of wrestling with it I just did it. After five articles I went back to reading. Then I wrote 8 more articles. Then I read another book. I also created a more effective binder for my papers and used clippings from old magazines as labels.

It's great. Now instead of allotting five straight hours for work and then not doing it because it sounds awful I allot an hour and a half. I set the timer and when it dings I give myself an hour for whatever time. And when it dings I go back to work.

It sounds schizo to you I am sure. But I spent 7 hours working today, once it is all totalled and I don't feel like it at all. I feel like I had plenty of random-nothing-thought-percolating time. This is very important to Jen's like me.

I recognize that I am SUPER LUCKY because of the work that I do. I am amazed by people that go to work and classes at regular times. It is literally AMAZING to me.

I am just so happy because I have some pretty big things coming my way and I would be a liar-liar-pants-on-fire if I didn't admit that I have been concerned about my ability to follow through. Turns out I just needed to rewire my ideas about what is productive. It sporadic and insane by I wrote $148 worth of articles in that seven hours instead of avoiding.

I am living my uniqueness, as extreme as it is.

It's bliss that the things you need come to you when you stop fighting who you are.

NEW FAVORITE QUOTE (and then I am done, I swear);

"Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and to be that perfectly." - Saint Francis de Sales