Alphabet Soup

Satu called yesterday after I left her house to see if I wanted to take a personality test. I did! I consider magazine surveys and personality tests kind of like reading fortune cookies. I don't know if you can trust them to give you true insight, but I will still consider the information as long as it doesn't give an undesirable outcome. If it says what I want to hear, then I knew it all along, otherwise it's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
I answered about 50 questions, a lot of which were the same question phrased in various ways. At the end of the test Satu informed me that I am an INFP which means two things to me: 1. I do have a personality, so I didn't fail the test. Yay! 2. If I want to remember who I am, I will have to give up space in my brain for this acronym.
Let's think about this for a minute.
I stands for introverted. I guess that's true, don't look at me.
N stands for intuitive which I suspected all along. The opposite of N is S, and I am definately not a sensing person. I don't pick up on cues and analyze things. I am usually completely unaware of the little details that make up my world. For example, when Gimmie peed on me at the dog park it took me a minute to figure out what happened. I percieved warmth, then I percieved wet, then I realized what warm and wet might mean when they happen at the same time and turned to see a little dog trotting off. It was only the combination of these three inputs that led me to understand what had happened. If I had been a sensing person, I might have known the dog was there and I may not have gotten the golden shower in the first place.
F stands for feeling. That is 100% accurate. I am a rational person only because I have trained myself to consider things more objectively than I am naturally inclined to do. I believe in the scientific method and I trust proven facts, but I force myself to consider them when I act. Emotionally I am like a little animal. If I am hungry, then the world will suffer. If I am cold, I feel emotionally fragile. If I am warm and full, I feel happy and like laughing. Watching "Piggy gets warm bath" on youtube can make the difference between a good night's sleep and a four hour panic attack. My faith in humanity is often restored just by watching flash mob videos or having someone love me enough to make me a cup of warm tea.
P stands for perceiving, which is apparantly a nice way of saying that my life is a MESS! It is true that I don't worry much with the order of things and I can go with the flow in most surroundings, but am I really that kind of shoot from the hip, whatever happens is fine hippie? Yeah, maybe, whatever. I truly can't be bothered to put a label on it.

What kind of mystical creature is Satu? She is an INTJ. That means we are half the same and half different. I think that's very promising. You can't date someone who is too much like you, you are supposed to be able to help eachother balance and bring different perspectives to the relationship.
I definately believe that Satu is an introvert. She hates to make first contact with anyone in the outside world. She's no wimp about it, when she has to be "ON," she will be, but given her druthers, she'druther not.
I am a little surprised that Satu is an N like me and not an S. She usually does know about the details around her. She not only knows that the couch is green and not grey, but she is aware of the couch's green-ness, the paper that was on the table, but no longer is, the spot on the floor and the show on TV all at the same time. I guess she is intuitive too though. Maybe you can be both.
T stands for thinking. Satu is nothing if not a thinker. Her mind is often strategizing and preparing her for action while I am just happy to have my head on her lap. She does nothing without considering the consequences, ever. I think our differences here are why we have a hard time doing simple things like picking a place to eat. She has to think about all the places we could eat and consider how crowded they might be on a Thursday and if they are likely to have parking and adequate fire exits while I can't think at all if I am hungry. But I think our differences are why we make a good team in life too. She helps me make a plan and think about possible other ways of changing the lightbulb before I stack a five gallon bucket on a three legged stool. I remind her to weigh emotions in all of the equations and if all else is equal, sometimes you just have to pick a direction and stick to it.
J is for Judgemental, which she can be sometimes, but from reading about the test, it seem this has more to do with how you oganize your life than how you feel about people. Satu knows people better than anyone I know. If you can trust anyone to judge the world correctly, it is her. Her world is orderly, even when she is behind in her tasks, she has her patterns. I doubt there is ever a time, for example, when she becomes so overwhelmed by her laundry that she just says "Fuck it," and throws the dark jeans into the pile of whites. She knows where things go, people included.
What I know is that we go together. It doesn't matter if I feel happy while she thinks she is happy as long as we keep building a happy life together.