A Time to Breathe

"A huge shout out to the people who haven't felt okay lately but still get up everyday and refuse to quit, you got this." ~ Unknown

This is my last post for a little bit.  I will have a post up on August 23, 2021, so just a little break.  I'm working on a major project for my family, with other little things, so I just need to push the pause button on this blog.  

With the Creator's Playbook Podcast, last week's episode didn't go up due to technical difficulties.  My brothers are on it and have contacted one of the programs we use, so it can get sorted.

Michael and I just finished recording an episode, and it turned out interesting.  It ended at I hour 15 minutes, so Michael has some editing to do, but the topic was moral dilemmas.  It was one of those situations where I didn't find out the topic until we started recording, just because that's how it works out sometimes and I don't always get the information, so it's just an edge of the seat situation.

By the end of the episode the moral dilemma we worked through was such that we couldn't come to a unified solution, and it got a little heated.  After recording I said to Michael something I wish I'd thought of in the moment, but it was something like: "How a moral dilemma is solved in a story says just as much about the author as it does about the characters."  Michael's goal is to have it up before the end of the week.  Steven was planning to get last weeks episode up today, but I don't know how that's going.  He's working hard on it.

I've been thinking about language learning and how I'm studying Japanese, French, and Spanish, and how I'm making hardly any progress in any of them.  I use to study Irish, but that got dropped, though I'm still watching Ros na Rún, an Irish soap opera on the TG4 app.  There's also a YouTube channel with the early stuff with subtitles.  It's a good way to hear the Irish language.  The soap opera has been going on since 1996.

Anywho, I've been watching a lot of language YouTube channels, and just realized I'm not the sort of person who can study a bunch of languages at once.  Some can, I can't.  It apparently takes about 3 years of consistent study.  I've decided with Japanese I'm just going to focus on the writing, no grammar at the moment.  Which means with actually learning to speak and such, I need to decide between French and Spanish, and I've been back and forth all week between the two.  Having to choose just one right now makes it feel like I'm leaving the other to die.  Do I pick the language I've dreamed of speaking since childhood, but failed with about 2 years in HS and then 2 years in college?  Or do I choose the more handy language that comes with no baggage?  Well, I've chosen French.  It's pulling at my heart more, and I need to just give it a shot, not give up.  Prove to myself I can learn the language, and that it's possible.

I've also been playing around with MBTI again, just watching and thinking about stuff.  I'm kinda wondering if I might be an INFP, but... GAH!!!!  In terms of cognitive functions it's FI (Introverted Feeling), NE (Extraverted Intuition), SI (Introverted Sensing), and in the weak spot TE (Extroverted Thinking).  I can see that working for me, and the FI -> SI loop sounds like something I deal with.  But I'm not moody or anything, even though I feel emotions and can categorize them, explain the complexities I'm feeling because emotions are never simple.  And I'm a staunch individualist, strong sense of self, and strong moral center.  Anne of Green Gables is an INFP, though it's debatable if Fred Rogers was an INFP or INFJ.  One fiction and the other real, but completely different.

But then I feel a connection to FE in that I can feel peoples emotions and feel the emotions in a room, and I also connect to TI, because even though I love researching and gathering different opinions/information, and I believe in absolute truths, I love thinking and working through stuff in my head and figuring out my own independent thoughts about things.  I care just as much about what people feel as I do about what people think.

Why do I have to choose?  Because someone somewhere said I had to?  Why are they right?  Can it be proven or tested?  The blind leading the blind, missing depth and opportunity because we allow ourselves to be boxed in and categorized.  So, I don't know.  It's fascinating.  The cognitive functions are worth studying, whatever you get out of them.  There's value in all the functions.  I don't know what I am.  In college I was typed INFJ, but I've been all over the place with the introverted intuition types.  I'm somewhere in there.  Does it matter?  :\ Hmmmm....

So I'll see y'all on the other side.  Have a great week and a half,

Sarah

P.S. I just kinda realized that naming this post "A Time to Breathe" is ironic, due to the fire smoke infiltrating the western US.  It's so bad over the weekend we couldn't see the mountains.  Now we have an outline, so a little better, but yesterday I woke up with a sore throat and my lungs are feeling it.  Praying for wind and rain.