mosaic

When I grow up, I want to be a tile artist. Looking at products like these makes me want to start scrubbing surfaces and mixing grout.

Actually, I think what I really want is a house with a garage where I can putter. I love academics, but I think I like working with my hands even more. I've been thinking all year- if I had the space, I could tile the top of an end table, or paint glass, or build a bookshelf, or buy a sewing machine and make hippie skirts, or turn wooden bowls and cups, or bead jewelry... my list of things I'd rather do than read a book keeps growing and growing, and knitting scarves isn't filling the gap. I think I've read fewer books this year than any other year in my life, which isn't exactly what I came to seminary to do. (Furthermore, it's both a suprising and a distressing realization.)

And a motorcycle. I'd really like a motorcycle. I walked past a motorcycle for sale today, a small one that would be perfect for me if I happened to have 800 dollars to spend on a machine to burn gas with. Vroom vroom.

Amid all this reading and preparation for the Discernment class, I keep wondering if I'm really an intuitive. Myers-Briggswise, I test as an INTP. I need to do more reading in Jung over the summer to better understand the system, but almost all the descriptions I've read of INTPs sound as though I ought to live a detached life within in my own mind, have no practical interest in the outcome of the theories that I create, and have little to no interest in working with people who do not meet my high standards of competence.

Other parts of the INTP descriptions sound a lot like me (distracted, analytical and critical, quietly arrogant...), but I'm less and less sure that the type fits me overall. It certainly doesn't sound like the process by which I ended up in seminary. I can't do much about my thinkerlyness, perhaps- although I've been challenged to consider whether or not I'm really a feeler- but I find myself cycling back to the parts of the ISTP description that fit me. Particularly the part about the motorcycles.

I think I only rethink this after confidently telling someone, "oh sure, I test as an intuitive, and here's why..." There is a part of me that loves meandering through thoughtfields with a good friend or two, constructing the day's reality wholecloth in our minds. On the other hand, I think there's a part of me that would love tiling vases just as much, and I haven't figured out how to give that part fair play. I can imagine what I want to create, but not where I'd do it.

There's just something about the prospect of two more years in seminary that makes me reconsider my decision to come here instead of applying to trucking school. I've been wondering how to go about itemizing what I'm looking for in an apartment, and I'm starting to think that unfussy space is going to be my highest priority.