As I have become more knowledgeable of my world, which lately I consider to consist mainly of blockchain and community building possibilities, I have become less talkative outside of these topics.
I have to admit this scope feels incredibly limited. I am almost embarrassed to admit it, though, I do have other interests, including walking daily and swimming, as well as playing guitar and other instruments, and traveling, listening to stories and people with deep specialized knowledge outside of my focal domains.
When I was younger I wondered if I actually enjoy talking. One thing I knew was that I could talk at the drop of a hat if it were in my best interest, but I was also asking myself if I enjoyed talking about things that didn’t seem relevant to me, because, although I could not articulate the issue at the time, talking just to talk did not feel enjoyable. Now I know I do enjoy talking — but for me, talking must be in the right contexts to be enjoyable, as well as the other side of the coin, not completely insufferable.
In particular, the Myers Briggs scale has helped me identify those contexts by showing me who the people are who I easily connect with.
By Myers Briggs measures, I am ENTJ, which refers to my dominant traits: extraverted, intuitive, thinking, judging. And apparently, many NTs get along, and much better than they do with non NTs. (See: www.16personalites.com for more)
This scale began taking on empirical value for me after noticing that 90% of Steemit’s employees were of the NT (Intuitive Thinking) types. Clearly I was attracting or attracted to some type of like mind.
Later I began applying this scale to my dating life to find out if it could help me find a life partner.
Today I spoke with an attractive INTP woman I had just met a few days ago, and I really enjoyed it. Her intuition and thinking were completely on my wavelength and it felt reciprocal. We were talking about everything — nothing was off limits — and the conversation was creative, from castle architecture to artistic passions. And those kind of experiences have helped me realize, with the right people, we can talk about anything.
Growing up I didn’t know this. I lived with three closely aged siblings and two loving parents. All wonderful, beautiful people. I have many things to admire them for, especially my parents. But I also know none of them to be NT. To me, this explains a lot — I almost always felt I was the odd one out and that no one was “getting me” while growing up, and it’s natural that personality idiosyncrasies between my family members and I could be behind my feeling of not being able to talk about just anything and that nagging sense of always being poorly understood — meaning that even if my family members do understand my tendencies — they tended not to understand why I think and talk the ways I do.
Today, I love my family members — and we get along well — but I’m still a black sheep in some conversations, especially politics. I mostly ignore these conversations but also can’t stand the feeling of witnessing hypocrisy when people I care for voice contradictory opinions, and this can cause me to voice my opinion about the hypocrisy I feel I’m seeing.
From these types of experiences I’ve learned to talk about subjects I’m interested in with people who share those interests, to talk about anything with people who share type of mind, and to talk about nothing with people who share no interests and share no mind.
To bring these lessons into action, I have learned to seek people I love to talk with and then I will assuredly find more happiness.
I love finding people that I love talking with.
Would you and I enjoy talking?
— Ned
