I start something and don’t keep going.  Not sure what the stopping point is about.  I started a blog to provide some accountability for myself, but one week in and like everything else, the drive peters out, goes kaput.  I want this to be a habit, writing, creating.  I get interrupted–inter-errupt–hmmm.  I never thought about the word interrupted as an internal thing, but it seems like an epiphany to realize it.  So much easier to blame the external distractions, like lack of sleep, bad television, bad attitudes, caring for others. Once distracted, I move on and continue my habit of not creating the habit, which would be the more healthy accountability thing.

A few years ago, my friend K introduced the Eneagram to me.  As with other personality indicators, I had immediate interest in knowing my type.  I was crest-fallen to read the results of my test, which I re-took, several times to be sure.  The very idea that I would use the expression, “crest-fallen” to describe my reaction is only confirmation of my type.  Allow me to explain….

Four, the Romantic Individualist, artist, mystic, melodramatic elitist.  They fancy themselves different than others–for me that experience has been as though I’m in a mass of people but still completely isolated.  Nostalgic, they have a tendency to focus on the past, which can help with insight, but can also cause a tilt of negative emotion and depression. Feelings are experienced deeply, which inspires a great capacity for compassion, empathy and a tolerance, to hear and understand the extreme suffering of others, even the ugly stuff.

It all fits, but it is the Celeste-part of the four that compels me to perceive myself as petty and shallow.  Celeste craves ideal circumstances and her weakness is envy, always believing that someone else got the better deal.  Celeste is like Norma Desmond, on the edge of losing it, wanting nothing but her specialness to dazzle everyone– “All right, Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my closeup….”  I despise Celeste in equal parts to having to appreciate her at the same time, because she keeps me on my toes, leads me to new creative possibilities on the positive side.  I suffer to think of myself as shallow and missing what’s most important, and that can be me too.

The upside to all of this is it actually explains a lot for me and reduces my sense that I am some sort of deviant, but instead sensitive and capable of seeing and feeling; and in a creative sense transform some of the muckity mud that I have wallowed in at times, into something lovely and resilient.

As for the accountability part, well I guess I’ll have to be more forgiving of myself and allow some more internal errupting to happen.  I tend to simmer.