Despite all the kerfuffle about Myers-Briggs I found my ENFP diagnosis very useful. I take the descriptions with a grain of salt because I know how well cold reading works, but there’re a couple of bits which seem empirically true:

Project-oriented, they may go through several different careers during their lifetime. To onlookers, the ENFP may seem directionless and without purpose…

[snip]

Because ENFPs live in the world of exciting possibilities, the details of everyday life are seen as trivial drudgery. They place no importance on detailed, maintenance-type tasks, and will frequently remain oblivous [sic] to these types of concerns.

This, essentially, is my Father’s argument stripped of judgment, emotion, and shouting. The repetitive message is that my low conscientiousness isn’t really my fault, it’s just a weakness.

Without hiding behind its lack, I have to acknowledge that follow-through is something I need a lot of help with. It’s also something I need to learn to sell. “I am not a details person” doesn’t get you jobs. “I am an ideas guy” sounds too work-avoidy unless delivered well (ie, with real power behind it).

Essentially: It is difficult for me to function to my full potential without a detail-oriented partner, an assistant, or employees. I can give advice and orders but not take them. Je suis un directeur juste* et j’ai besoin d’un producteur. Tough talk, but there it is: I suck at starting careers and my personality dooms me to perpetually start new careers. Sisyphus understands the nature of his punishment, if not the reason. Oh, right: existence. That’ll learn me.

I’ve come to understand that I haven’t been trained to do things that actually interest me, partly because society writ-small (ie, locally to me) doesn’t value my strengths. This is just an unhappy accident of birth. My background is definitionally bourgeois — that’s the only kind of life that makes any real, personal sense. Anything else I’d like to do, while terribly attractive, is simultaneously riddled with terrifying unknowns.

Bluntly: I really suck at being poor, and that scares me, probably more than is reasonable.

The truth of where I come from is that there actually weren’t a lot of options: I was going to university, getting a practical degree or two, and then working for forty years, period. If I enjoyed the work that would be a happy bonus, but on the whole unnecessary to my social function.

Which isn’t to say that I am not extremely fortunate. Depending on your point of view the above may ring true or sound like ridiculous bourgie whinging. I’m just trying to faithfully represent my own experience.

No one said change is easy. In fact they say change is impossible. I’ve got to accept what I need to accept, patch what I need to patch, and scheme long-term towards freedom and fulfillment.

* “juste” is one of those words that’s hard for Babelfish to translate. It means “just” in the sense “just-so”, “exactly”, “precisely”. “Le mot juste” is “the right word”.