Communicating

This evening Fritz fell asleep next to me in bed while I was still working on my lap top. His arm flopped across the keyboard, suddenly, with a such a jolt that I knew he was not merely drifting to sleep, by dropping into sleep like a rock. It was strange and funny. It also struck me as simultaneously intimate and distant. I felt so very aware of him and yet he was so profoundly unaware of me. I wondered if he often flops his arms around on me at night. Perhaps I have not noticed (in 14 years!), because, I, too, am dropping into sleep. In which case, tonight is simply one night when we are more distant than usual.

Honestly, my mind is elsewhere tonight. I'm thinking about whether I'm a negative person or cautious worrywart. I think I'm cautious, but how many perceive me as negative? Is there a difference, or is this just semantics? I wonder if my love of problem solving makes me too eager to seek out problems in the first place. I wonder about what my young co-worker said to me this week: that I'm putting too much energy into things that are beyond my control. I have more work to do than there are hours in the day, never mind finding time to be with the kids. Somehow, this orchestra which is life is not quite syncing up yet. I'm collecting all the different pieces, finally, painstakingly, but there's a lot effort in the process and still a lot dissonance in the resulting sound.

I took one of those DISC assessments for my job. The administering company said something like, this is not about your personality, this is about your communication style. Apparently, my communication style has a healthy does of skepticism and sarcasm (or negativity?!?) because I immediately thought, Yeah, right.

Anyway. I do love these assessments, whether it's Myer Briggs or Spirit Animal. Bring it on! So interesting! The data from the assessment was displayed in all sorts of ways. Basically, my strongest scores were two naturally opposing traits Dominance (D) and Stability (S). Here's the chart (about myself) that I found most intriguing:

The black circle is my "Natural Style" and the black star is my "Adapted Style." The idea is that under more stressful circumstances, we change our behavior. Apparently, I am not doing that. At first I was worried about this. Then I decided that maybe it's okay to be consistent. I still do not really know. But: interesting to ponder!

The other thing I found interesting is how close I am to the center of the circle. Sometimes bosses have described me as "Getting along with everyone." I suppose that if you are nearer the center of the circle – and this assessment is purportedly all about communication – then being close to the center of the circle would be something about communicating well with a variety of people. But I don't really think of myself as a very good communicator at all.

I think of myself as hopelessly awkward.

Then, because I like to collect more information, I googled something that said Richard Nixon had the same DISC profile circle number (57), known as the "Columbo Pattern," and people never knew what to think of him. Because he wasn't an open book or easy to read; essentially his communication style put them ill at ease. Well. That's GREAT. So, who knows? Not ME! You'd think I'd get over these assessments, especially since they always seem to compare me to some unfortunate president or presidential candidate.

In honor of completing six months at my new job, I'm planning a long weekend vacation with Fritz and the kids. I am really looking forward to it. We need some quality time together, and henceforth I hope to be much, much better at taking all my vacation time.