Getting To Know An INTJ

I have come to realize, over the past few years, that it must be incredibly hard to get to know me.  When I am at work, I am focused on work.  It hardly ever occurs to me that I should share something about my personal life with others. When I do, I find that it's things about OTHER aspects of my life... the kids, my husband, the house, the car, the dog... whatever.  It doesn't usually have anything to actually do with ME at all.  

I'm not sure if this stems from the belief that others just won't be interested, or if perhaps I think they might judge me in some way... but nonetheless it is true. 

This became very obvious when I went to the TGMI training class last year.  We were tasked with creating something (poster or other doo-dad) to share with the group about who you are.  The assignment gave me nightmares.  How the hell was I going to stand up in front of a room of 30+ strangers and provide a nice, neat little summary of "Who I Am"?  UGH!!!...  UGH, UGH, UGH!!!!

I spent countless hours in worried panic, trying to figure out what to do.  Finally, I decided my very reluctance was my salvation.  THAT was who I was... Private. 

It occurred to me as I was thinking about the project that I have worked with people for YEARS and even have long-time friends that don't know some of the most basic things about what I'm interested in or what I've done in my life.  For some reason, I just don't talk about it.  Those things seem like something I do with my time when I'm not spending it with people.  So very compartmentalized...

This was my final project about me:

Inside of the jar there is sand, and a whole bunch of little objects that you can't find unless you really dig.  It takes a lot of patience and some luck to actually see all of the things in the jar... and there were a LOT of them.  I'm still not sure I've seen them all since the day they went into it.  This little jar is who I am in a sense. On the outside it probably seems pretty boring... like "What's the point?" but once you start turning it around and messing with it, all kinds of little peculiarities become visible.  That is me in a nutshell.  It literally probably takes a concerted effort for others to pull those things out of me.  My husband did it, somehow.  I did take a picture of what is inside of it before I dumped it all together, but what would be the fun in posting that? After all, you're just The Internet... why should you get a freebie?  

I swear, I don't mean to be obnoxious or to make it hard on people... it isn't something I do intentionally or even consciously.  As I grow older though, I feel more and more like I have to find a way to let people into that part of my world, and it feels almost impossible.  I blame my lack of practice at it, because somehow it gets weird... like being in the middle of a conversation about soup and suddenly blurting out "I like turtles."  ("I love lamp"?)

I think I'll continue to add things to it over the years.  It might be fun to see how it grows over time, like me.  Is it odd that I feel a certain fondness for this little jar of sand?  It's like projecting myself into something tangible and more "permanent" in this world than I am.  (I use the word permanent loosely... science wins)

The Musical INTJ

If Intuition loosely equates to "looking for meaning in things and making associations", then music is a perfect haven for the intuitive being.  I have always loved music, for as long as I can remember.  

One of my earliest memories was a record (yes, a record) that had kids songs on it, including "10 little Indians".  It would sing the song first in English, and then repeat the whole thing in Spanish.  Even then I was practicing for my trip to Spain...

In Kindergarten I won a 'clean ears award' (Yes, it's stupid) from music class that had a Q-tip with a golden ribbon on it because I could mimic the notes the teacher was singing on a wooden xylophone in longer and longer sequences until I out performed everyone else in the class.  I'd have never told her that it was also because I could READ enough already to know the notes that were written on it.  Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do were pretty easy to figure out.

In first or second grade our music teacher, Mrs. McClaren, showed us a video of students singing in a large choir in Spanish.  The song was called Des Colores, which I became obsessed with.  I asked her if I could take a copy of the words home with me, and I sang the song to myself a hundred times until I could never forget it, and still hear the refrain in my head to this day.  I didn't understand most of the words... but it wasn't exactly the words that mattered. There was something pleasing about making music itself, about singing along with others who were singing that spoke to me.  

There was always music to listen to in the car and I helped my Mom shuffle 8-Tracks around and into the player that ate the damn things more often than it played them... but when it worked, we had a lot of fun.  I remember trying soooo hard to hold onto that last note in "I Can't Fight This Feeling" and was rather proud of myself when I could finally do it.  My love of country and rock music was born as I went back and forth between Willie Nelson and Credence Clearwater Revival each time I rode with Mom or Dad.  

As I got older, I wanted to play instruments and a guitar was at the top of my list.  I tried to self-teach myself from the time I was 12.  Apparently once I had figured out the chords that appeared most frequently in songs I knew, I was content, because that is where I stopped learning guitar and began singing along with it for a VERY long time.  It wasn't until a friend introduced me to Stevie Ray Vaughan that my brain went "What the heck was that!?"  It was then that I had to buy my first electric guitar and I have hardly touched an acoustic since.

I'll brush past my few years in band as a trombone player because they were some of the most horrid, pleasing moments I had as a child.  Forced to play an instrument that I didn't like, I warred with myself over the fact that I was MAKING music... but it always sounded suspiciously like a whoopie cushion no matter how 'good' I got.  I did earn a little pendant award at a county music festival, but it may have been the dawning age of participation awards... 

I played keyboard and piano a little bit in highschool, again mostly self-teaching (with a few lessons thrown in) and I didn't get very far before graduation.

I played with my sisters trumpets and flutes until I could play the scale.  I played with harmonica's and clarinets and drums and every other thing I could get my hands on, but nothing was quite as much fun as the piano.  

What I really wanted was to sing.  Singing borders on crossing over to another plane of existence for me, and is still one of the best stress relieving things I can do for myself. I was a dedicated choir member from middle school through graduation and loved absolutely every minute.  

It can't be a coincidence that I lived in Music City, (Llyria) Spain and now I live in Music City, TN.   

If somehow you are still reading after that long and boring walk down memory lane, let me move on to the important part.  

Music holds memories.  

Did you catch that?  Every one of those things that I wrote about have very vivid mental images in my mind, along with a million other musical memories. Music seems to be the way that I count the passing of time in my life, and how I preserve the times that are important to me.  Every single song on my iPod has memories and people tied to them.  I literally had to purge my old music once many years ago because I realized that a lot of the songs I was listening to and enjoyed were tied to painful memories... and every time I heard the song, the pain would come up and hit me as if no time had passed at all.  Even "I Can't Fight This Feeling", even though it started out innocent enough when I was little, carries the sadness of my baby brothers funeral with it.  I would dare say that a person could get to know me faster than anyone ever thought possible by skimming through my music list and asking "What is this one tied to?" (if I could withstand the barrage).  Music is where my squishy INTJ emotions hide.  I hoard these little treasures like others hoard pictures, and I pull them out to examine them and relive them when the mood strikes me.  

I don't know if this is the case with all INTJ's, I'd imagine we each have our own way of 'storing' emotions, but I would also bet that it's something Intuition related, perhaps artistic after a fashion.  I'd be curious to know if others experience a similar phenomenon.