Napkin-drawings and personality tests

Kelsey and I hung out at Clackamas Town Center today, which is always a pleasure! I don't think we've had time to chat since... not sure exactly, but it's probably been approximately forever. So it was nice to catch up and such.

I told her all about the situation with Christopher and confessed how scary it is to have no idea what my future looks like. She was able to sympathize, and attributes her own boyfriend's maturity in the subject to a mentor of his.

We spent most of the time at the Barnes & Noble since it was one of the only places in the mall that was open past 7. She picked up a book on "cosmic couplings," which analyzed relationships based on gender and zodiac signs. None of the descriptions sounded right, so after a while we chalked it up to being a bad book. Finding little stools to sit on in the children's books section, we flipped through "Unfolding The Napkin," a guide to "solving complex problems with simple drawings." It was a fantastic book, and after we'd gone through it we found ourselves sitting in the Starbucks with borrowed pens and a handful of napkins. The complex problem we attacked: what the hell I was going to do after graduating. Apparently we weren't very good at the napkin drawings because things looked even more confusing when we tried to employ simple pictures.

As an alternative to horoscopes and oversimplifications, we hunted down a book she'd had when she was younger on finding a job that suits your personality. She struck up a conversation with a nice man and they talked about marketing and tennis and while he was quite flattering and polite, I found myself staring at titles on the book spines behind him and shortly buried myself in a chapter of a book on Enneagram personality types. I'd scanned the nine basic types and easily identified myself as "the Enthusiast." I think "spontaneous" and "scattered" gave it away.

We eventually found what Kels was talking about and the book was very interesting -- I didn't get much time to read more in-depth, but under my Myers-Briggs TI (ENFP) I found a list of careers I would love. Of course, there was a good portion of them that I'd never heard of... so there are still lots of options I suppose. I plan on hitting the library (or just heading back to B&N!) to read more.

I always thought I'd frame my life around my someone special. But with the lemons life has handed to me, I can still follow my heart and perfect my lemonade recipe.