(If you have no idea what I’m talking about and think I’ve lost my mind, you might be right. But first read yesterday’s blog entry, as it might clear up at least the first part.)

The enneagram types are placed around a circle in a particular order, with lines and arrows going every which way. If you want to know the details, read the book or look online or something (if you do look online, you’ll notice that some of the type names are different — Mediator is called Peacemaker, for example).

The two types next to yours are the wings, and they share significant similarities. As a Mediator, my two wings are the Perfectionist and the Protector.

Mediators and Perfectionists both easily forget or suppress their own needs, and they both value steadiness, organization, and harmony. However, Perfectionists hold to their positions rigidly, expecting others to change, while Mediators readily adapt to accommodate others’ positions, often losing sight of their own.

The other wing, the Protector, is like the Mediator in that both respond with gut reactions, seek comfort, and get diverted from essential priorities. The key difference is that Protectors welcome conflict and even anger, while Mediators avoid these. Protectors are decisive, but Mediators defer to others.

On the circle, the two types with the crazy pointing arrows are the security and stress types. That is, one is the way you act when secure, and the other is the way you act when you’re stressed. The Mediator’s security type is the Performer. This means that Mediators, when feeling secure, act more like Performers (more singularly focused on their own goals, more efficient, and more image-oriented).

The Mediator’s stress type is the Loyal Skeptic. So, when Mediators are feeling stress, they become fearful, questioning, and wary, like Loyal Skeptics. But Mediators go along with others before testing and questioning, while Loyal Skeptics test and question before going along with others.

So, as you can see, I’m a doormat. But I’m working on it and getting better.

Here are some highlights from my other major types, just because I can’t stop talking about myself.

The Epicure:

• I learned to protect myself from limitations and pain by imagining many fascinating possibilities for the future. I became a glutton for interesting ideas and experiences.
• My attention is on fascinating ideas, plans, options, projects. Interconnections and interrelationships among diverse areas of information and knowledge.
• I’m stressed by the overload that results from trying to sample all that life has to offer.
• I’m angered by constraints or limits that prevent me from getting what I want.
• I need to practice working on one thing at a time until it’s completed. Live life more fully in the present moment and less in the future.

The Observer:

• I learned to protect myself from intrusive demands and being drained of my resources by becoming private and self-sufficient. I do this by accumulating a lot of knowledge.
• I put my energy into learning all there is to know about a subject. Maintaining sufficient privacy, boundaries, and limits.
• I do everything I can to avoid feelings of inadequacy and emptiness.
• I am stressed out by trying to learn everything there is to know before taking action.
• I am upset when I don’t have enough private time to restore my energy.

So, in conclusion, I’m a reclusive doormat with a short attention span. Aren’t you glad you’re my friend?

First is the way it explains how the different personality types are related to each other, which I’ll get to later.

The other thing is the basic proposition of the whole thing. Each of the types is defined by the fundamental principle this person has lost sight of, what she came to believe instead, and the strategy she developed to cope with this belief. Again, I’ll explain more later.

First, a little overview.

According to this particular system, there are nine personality types: Perfectionist, Giver, Performer, Romantic, Observer, Loyal Skeptic, Epicure, Protector, and Mediator. I’m not going to go into detail on all of them, because that’s what the book is for, and I really don’t want my post to be 109 pages long, and I suspect you don’t want that either.

Instead, I’ll talk about my dominant type and explain all the cool things I learned about myself, and if you want to know more you can go check out the book. Because seriously, this blog is all about me.

My top three types came out to be Mediator, Epicure, and Observer, and as I read the descriptions of them, it’s really hard for me to nail one down as dominant, because I’m such a complex and beautiful creature. I see myself in all three to a great extent.

But for the purposes of this little lesson in enneagrammatics, I’ll go with Mediator, because it ranked slightly above the other two.

According to the little book, as a Mediator, I have lost sight of the fact that “everyone belongs equally in a state of unconditional love and union,” which sounds like sappy gibberish to me, but I’ll go with it. It gets better in a bit.

What I came to believe instead was that “the world makes people unimportant and requires them to blend in, which provides them with a sense of comfort and belonging.” Hmm. Getting better, but not quite how I’d sum up my life.

The strategy I developed to cope with this belief: “I learned to forget myself and merge with others. I substituted inessentials and small comforts for real priorities.” Now we’re getting somewhere. Of course, it’s kinda painful to see some of my major shortcomings laid out like that, but this is for science.

And here’s where it gets really eerie. Because of this strategy, my attention is on “other’s agendas, requests, and demands” and “all the things in the environment that beckon.” I put my energy into “being sensitive to others and trying to please them,” “containing anger,” “maintaining peace and quiet,” and “doing the less essential and comforting activities rather than the more important and more disturbing ones.”

I do everything I can to avoid conflict, confrontation, and feeling uncomfortable. My strengths are supportiveness, accountability, and being adaptive, accepting, and receptive.

Stress is caused by taking a position, or saying no to someone and having that person get angry. I’m angered when I’m treated as not important or forced to face conflict. My anger manifests itself as stubbornness or resistance, occasionally boiling over and exploding.

(If you know me at all, you should be nodding right now.)

And then it goes on to tell me how to further my personal development, which basically entails paying attention to my own needs and accepting discomfort as a natural part of life. Oh, and I need to pay attention to my real priorities, rather than giving everything equal importance.

And here’s the definition of my real friends, the people I’ve been surrounding myself with lately (it’s disguised as “how others can support my development,” but I know it’s just a description of my few wonderful friends — probably the only people who read this thing): “Encourage me to express my own position. Ask me what I want and what is good for me, and give me time to figure out the answer. Support me when I act responsibly toward myself. Allow me to acknowledge my anger. Encourage me to set and keep my own boundaries, limits, and priorities.”

Apparently, I’m not a lost cause yet!

Okay, I think I’ve written enough on this topic for now. I’ll get into the rest of the enneagram stuff next time, in the greatly anticipated sequel.

But I’ve gotten past that, and I feel great. I still have mood swings, crying jags, and fits of agitation that leave a mile-wide swatch of burnt foliage and startled glances.

But I feel things. The anti-depressants do a great job of making the lows not quite so low, bt the highs feel a little artificial, and not quite so high. They narrow the range of emotions, which is exactly what you need when your lows are so low it feels impossible to see any light ever again.

But I guess my problems aren’t entirely chemical. I guess it was situation to a larger extent than I’d realized. It’s strange though, because my life right now is full of turmoil and uncertainty and frustration. Maybe, somewhere deep inside my brain, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. There is a better future ahead of me. All is not hopeless.

It feels good to have that glimmer of hope, and to know it’s not artificially caused by a pill.

Of course, I still have a supply of happy pills at the ready, just in case the world kicks me in the teeth a few more times and I need a boost of Stepford.

I like high school kids. Adolescents. Smallish humans in the throes of one of life’s most agonizing stages.

It’s hard for me to pin down exactly what it is about teenagers that I’m so drawn to. It’s their energy, but also their potential. Adolescents are so full of life, and they have so much life ahead of them.

I remember having these same thoughts when I went to the homecoming football game of my old high school. I love seeing the kids run around and do all the things that kids that age do — squeal in delight, beat the crap out of each other with glee, and dress themselves in ways that would make a cheap hooker blush. They show their school spirit by wrapping themselves in the most ridiculous clothes and wigs and face paint ever imagined. Or they go the route of wearing twelve layers of black with anarchy symbols and silver jingly bits all over the place. They guzzle down hot dogs and twinkies and deep fried animal parts and wholly unnecessary energy drinks without thinking even once about waistlines or cholesterol levels.

Everything in a teenager’s life is so big, so all-encompassing and life-threatening. They are absolutely brilliant one moment, speaking life truths that are forgotten or overlooked by jaded and world-weary adults, and spouting the most inane nonsense the next.

I think it’s a real shame that adults are so dismissive and scornful of teenagers. Sure, they’re embarrassing and awkward and sometimes rude, but at least they have an excuse. Raging hormones, uncertainty about the future, and a conflicting urge to fit in and stand out make for some turbulent behaviors.

Personally, I think adults just don’t want to remember what they were like at that age. Whether or not they were as outwardly boisterous as some of the kids today, they had the same things going on internally. But instead of showing sympathy, empathy, and understanding, most grown-ups choose to shun these kids and deny any knowledge or comprehension of why they act how they do. Or maybe they’re jealous, wishing they could go back to that time when turning in an essay or getting a prom date were the big traumas, not paying the mortgage or fighting cancer. But the jealous ones forget how difficult it was, and is, to be a teenager. Remember puberty?

I have the utmost respect for anyone in the middle of these crazy years, pretty much from 6th grade through middle age, but especially the teens. Adolescents are expected to behave and conform, as if they were still in elementary school, but also grow up and act like responsible adults. And they really are trying to do both, to be both, but it’s impossible. And they get hassled from both sides. “Stop being so immature! Grow up! Figure it out!” “Sit down and be quiet! Do what you’re told! You’re getting awfully big for your britches!” It’s amazing they make it to adulthood at all, with all the conflicting messages and demands.

I love being around kids at this age, and it’s one of the things I miss most from teaching. They’re so surprising, amazing, and infuriating. They rock the boat. They do the socially unacceptable things that make people uncomfortable, because they’re testing the waters, learning the consequences, judging the limits. It’s necessary for their passage to “responsible adulthood,” and it’s too bad adults aren’t more tolerant of it. At least rude kids have the excuse that they’re learning what’s acceptable. Rude adults should know better.

Now, in no way am I saying or implying that there shouldn’t be consequences or punishments when adolescents get out of line. On the contrary, that’s the only way they’ll learn. Parents who let their kids run wild aren’t doing them a favor at all.

I just think the older generations are doing everyone a disservice by acting like, and perhaps wishing, teenagers didn’t exist. If they could see all the excitement and potential in this exhibit hall, maybe that would change a little. Or maybe people would just see rowdy, disrespectful kids, like they expect.

For further study: Anatomy of a Teenager’s Brain

I keep taking career and aptitude and interest and personality tests, but I don’t know why. They all tell me I should be a writer. Well, a writer or a member of the clergy, but I assume that’s just the universe’s way of teasing me. Maybe my subconscious is guiding my results on all these tests and skewing them toward writer, but even if that’s the case, perhaps especially if that’s the case, then writing is what I’m meant to do, right?

I just love the whole idea of it: jotting down observations of the world around me, working with words and phrases to make them fit the ideas in my mind, imagining people and places, and fiddling around with the English language until it’s just so. The range of things I could write about seems limitless. I want to write about dogs and feminism and Shakespeare and gopher shooting and business travel and self-help theories and shoe shopping and divorce and teenage angst and middle-age angst and reality television and Crystal Light. I feel like I need to write about everything all at once, like there’s some urgent need to get everything about myself and the world around me down on paper right now.

Then there’s the fear. If I never write anything, I can go on pretending that I’d be a really awesome writer if only I had the time or inclination to do it. If I actually give it a shot, I’ll be exposed as the pathetic fraud that I really am. And once I’ve agonized over a keyboard for long enough to eke out a few sad little paragraphs, I’ll have to face the bitter reality of editing, revising, and proofreading. Once I’ve gotten all those words out of my head and onto paper (real or digital), I don’t want to have to see it again, try again to tame those words that only get more restless when disturbed.

My mom thinks I’m afraid of success, not failure. I think maybe I’m afraid of both, but becoming a success certainly seems like less of a hardship than failing miserably and spending the rest of my life in a job that requires a name tag.

One problem is that I am a planner. I like to gather information from every conceivable source, assemble it physically and mentally in some kind of logical way, and check all sources again to make sure I haven’t missed any crucial or trivial tidbits, before I can begin any project. This is especially true with writing.

Case in point: I just spent about two hours searching the internet for blog tips, blog information, blog marketing techniques, blog profitability enhancers, blog posting ideas, and blogs about blogging. The word “blog” is starting to look funny. Right now, while pecking out a few words here and there, I’m searching the library system and Amazon for books on creating weblogs. It’s a sickness. I have to feel completely educated and prepared for a task before I can attempt it.

The sad part is that, once I’ve thoroughly researched every aspect of a topic, I lose interest and never actually do what it is that I spent all this time preparing to do. Writing is a little different, because I never lose the urge to write. Instead, I just run out of time or energy, but that nagging voice that tells me I should write remains. This leaves me in a constant state of nagging agitation and unfulfillment. Which brings me to where I am right now. Writing this treatise on why I can’t write in an ironic attempt to actually get writing, to get some oomph to crawl over that first speed bump.

I’m hoping that this blog format will be the magical cure to all my writing woes. I know it won’t really do all that, but it’s fun to think about. I need a place to put stuff I’ve written, a place that will be waiting for me to keep putting stuff there, a place that’s not too picky about how eloquent or life-altering the stuff is, but a place that will actually be viewed by at least one or two other people, maybe for feedback, maybe for dialogue, maybe just for confession or venting or navel-gazing. I hope this blog will do that for me, motivate me, give me a reason to keep on writing.