Gram's House and Gaming

Today, I feel like discussing my grandmother's house, gaming there, and gaming with others since then.

First of all, my parents each had fairly large families and I was an only child.  Most of my familial interactions came with my grandparents or cousins (of which I had quite a few). 

My mother's parents were saints, except that Gram smoked.  My only negative memories of that house involve hacking and wheezing.  But oh, all the positive memories...

The house was built so that the top floor was above ground level and the main floor was built into the ground.  When you would arrive, you'd descend half a dozen natural stone slabs acting as stairs to enter an enclosed porch that led into the kitchen. 

In the kitchen, every cabinet, cupboard, and drawer that wasn't filled with dishes, utensils, or pots and pans was instead filled with candy, potato chips, sugary cereal, nestle quick, doughnuts, and other treats for the grandkids (back before these things were bad for you).  Gram and Pap loved us dearly and wanted to maximize our fun and enjoyment.  And they were good at it.

One common occurrence during the summertime, Gram, my great aunt, and up to three of my cousins would play board and card games late into the night.  Since I was usually the oldest grandkid there and the most interested in what we were playing, I was usually the one to choose the game.  My favorites were cards (Crazy 8's and Rummy were the best), Monopoly, and Clue, with an honorable mention going out to Boggle.

I loved gaming from an early age.  I loved the board, the figures, the components, the chits, the dice.  I loved moving figures around and following the process for whatever space they landed in.  We played games of Monopoly with free parking jackpots and no property trading that would last 8 hours.  I remained engaged throughout.

I also loved having real people to match myself against, until they got tired (and sometimes whiney) and quit.  Even better were the gaming snacks.  Kitchen-popped popcorn with more melted butter and salt than I should have eaten in a week, 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew or Sunkist, Nestle Crunches and other candy bars.

I would finally crash around 3 or 4 in the morning.  Then when I would wake up, it was time for bacon, eggs over easy, toast, and orange juice.  Delicious.  Amazing.  Exactly what I craved.  Still love this breakfast.

I learned from Gram and Pap that it's okay to show your love for the people you care about by how you treat them and what you do for them/with them.  Ever since they passed, I've been looking for this experience again, but it's so elusive.  Most people I've met are too busy, preoccupied, unorganized, or uninterested to unconditionally enjoy active mental experiences with others on a consistent basis.

Allow me to jump forward 10-20 years.

As a present-day fantasy gaming geek, I occasionally gather with friends to play tabletop rpgs, Magic: the Gathering, or some random board game. 

The group I think most fondly upon is my first rpg group, which met in a comic book shop near my hometown.  It was open gaming with two to four tables each Sunday. At my table, the game was typically D&D and the GM was my best friend.

The gm was a highly imaginative yet sensitive fantasy fan.  We would play a game for a couple months, get bored and ask him to run something else, and he would comply.  It was public gaming, so anyone could show up; and since our GM didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, we usually ended up with an eccentric crew of noobie players or experienced guys trying out some odd pet character concept on the kids table.

Thus, it was always a juvenile affair full of shallow but quirky two-dimensional power-gamed characters, trite plots, and random monsters in evocative ruins that always led to an amazing melodramatic midboss setpiece encounter.  It was a glorious mess and I miss it dearly.

Since then, all the groups I've been in have been flawed in some social way.  The most recent, only by having too few people able to attend regularly due to familial commitements. In short, I'm still trying to put together the perfect group and recapture the past. I'm hoping my childhood wasn't a fluke and that I can once again find meaning through activity with others in addition to my ability to find meaning while alone.

Two loose ends to tie up before I sign off:

#1, my honorable mention of Boggle - it wasn't my favorite due to its logical simplicity and small number of accessible parts.  But I did enjoy that it was unlike any of the other games we would play: quick, simple, and required vigorous shaking.  I also like that Gram was pretty crafty and could occasionally suprise me with the words she would find.  And when she did, I loved watching that priceless "look what I found" grin form upon her face.

#2: the kitchen table upon which we played is currently in my living room and it's still used for gaming.  It seems appropriate.

Until next time,

Taz

ISTP Can Do It

Back to personality page for a short post about growth and rules to live by to achieve success.  Tonight, I specifically want to discuss the following:

• Feed Your Strengths (gift at mastering your physical environment)
• Face Your Weaknesses (get into new situations)
• It's okay to get out of your comfort zone.

Together, these suggestions have helped me to grow and live fearlessly and I love it.  I feel completely comfortable taking charge now in many situations and allowing my personality to shine through.

Before I understood my type, I would have been confused and been trying to resolve situations by "normal," expected means.  Upon finally fully reflecting on my gifts, I find that I'm watchful, capable, sensible, and independent and that I have greater ability to rely upon my reflexes and values than ever before.

A year ago when I traveled work work, I hated to drive.  I felt too insecure that I would make a mistake and felt overwhelmed by all the traffic and the possibility of missing turns.  Today, I can say I thoroughly enjoy driving and being in control.  I have nothing to prove, I tend to make good decisions, I can take directions, and I'm calm and collected enough to recover from mistakes.

The ultimate example, just tonight my flight was canceled.  I rallied fellow traveling coworkers who contacted our travel department and booked us to reach a city 2 hours from home.  Then, I drove the whole way back in a snowstorm safely, yet expediently, without losing my cool.

I focused my senses and allowed my mind to react faster than I could think about what to do next.

It was easy.  It was exciting.  It was an adventure.  I'm ready for another. Although I could use 40 winks first...

In the meantime, if you participate in any hobbies that might get a guy out of his comfort zone, I'd love to hear about them.

Until next time,

Taz

ISTP Weaknesses

Today I want to talk about ISTP weaknesses.

• Living entirely in the present, they have difficulty with long-term commitments
• Not naturally good at expressing feelings and emotions
• Not tuned in to what others are feeling, they may be insensitive at times
• Tendency to be overly private and hold back part of themselves
• Need a lot of personal space, which they don't like to have invaded
• They thrive on action and excitement, and may stir things up to create it

These would all be spot on, but my desire to fit in forced me to develop social tools to bypass some of these weaknesses.

Starting with living in the present/difficulty with long-term commitments, I would say this is generally true.  I don't like having time limits (although deadlines are wonderful motivators and beating a deadline provides me with great satisfaction).  I want to enjoy each moment to its fullest and not have to worry about wrapping up my current task so I can move on to another.  I'll commit to social gatherings if I'm given a day or two of notice and have plenty of time on my schedule.  Planning becomes a game and, once I have something on my schedule, I try not to think about it or else I inevitably come up with reasons why I don't want to go.  So, I create meetings with a calendar reminder, forget about them (unless major preparation needs to occur), and allow them to practically become spontaneous.  That I can deal with.

Regarding feelings, emotions, and insensitivity, this is pretty true as well.  Like I said last time, I learned how to conform in order to fit in.  To cope, I've thoroughly studied the behavior of others, watching how people act in various situations. Unless I'm stressed out, I can typically feign knowledge and understanding during conversations in order to keep the other person interested and talking until I do understand. I also heavily emote with body language and hand gestures and I maintain eye contact with my conversational victim partner.

I'm very private and I do hold back.  There are things I don't tell my best friend.  I segregate friends to make socializing easier.  I keep my church friends at church events, gaming frineds at gaming events, my co-workers at work.  Speaking of which, it's also true that I treat work as work.  While I'm there, I don't socialize much, I get right down to business, and I don't leave until the important business is complete for the day. I also have difficulty making new friends and I tend to discount people until I understand how they can fit into my life.

Personal space: if I don't know you or if I'm stressed, I want you farther than an arm's length away.  It's that simple.  And don't touch my stuff.  Don't reorganize, don't clean.  It's my mess and I use my perception and keen memory to remember where things are located within it.  If I like you and I can observe your behavior, that's different; shake my hand, give me a hug, get close and feel free to play.

Action, excitement, and stirring things up: this is why I'm no longer happily married (separated after just a couple years).  Oh, the difficulty understanding each other's basic psychological drives definitely hurt the relationship, but my patience and optimism, her desires for peace, harmony, and the wellfare of others, and our similar ideals on how people should interact kept us together longer than we should have been.  Even after everything we've been through, even though the love required to hold a marriage together is gone, we're still best friends.  I can talk to her like none other.

So why did action, excitement, and stirring things up lead to our break up?  Because I wanted spontaneous craziness in my life.  I wanted to watch reactions.  I wanted to observe interactions.  And I do believe that peace and understanding are essential to a positive relationship, but they're boring.  It's in my nature to shake things up and look for trouble.

Saturday morning Taz with no plans and no stressors would wake up and shake up the entire house, turning on lights, music, games or television, burning "cooking" breakfast, and reveling in the fresh chaos.  My ex would cautiously wander through the house, getting a grip room by room, until she found me and requested that I shut half of it off.

And there's the problem.  Shutting half of me off.  And shutting half of her off.  We couldn't be ourselves together.

Okay, enough of that for now.  There's probably a future post in here somewhere.

One caveat, one big exception to all the weaknesses above: they go away when I'm treating my current situation like a game. To stay sane, I've played, "How many meetings can I have in one day?" "What is my conversational partner really trying to get out of this interaction?" "How close can I let someone get and for how long before I freak out?" and my favorite, "What can I do and what can I put up with that no one else can?"

Until next time,

Taz

ISTP Strengths

Hello, world.  This is my first blog post ever.  Ever, ever.  First post, first blog.  It's a difficult step for me because I'm a private person (even on the internet!) and, as my personality type indicates, I don't particularly like sharing with strangers. 

But, I'm also a geek with a lot of personality and my impulses tell me this is a go. So, it's time.

So yeah, ISTP. I'm an introverted sensor/thinker with a perceiving preference.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out my type on wikipedia (including a quick description of the mbti) or just read on.

One more quick link, to personality page.  This site details each type, gives typical strengths and weaknesses, and gives general career/improvement advice.

ProTip: skip the quiz and figure it out yourself.  You may bypass 5+ years of thinking you're a different type (thanks, internship MBTI and my own poor intuition...).

ISTP Strengths

• Good listeners
• Usually self-confident
• Generally optimistic and fun to be with
• Practical and realistic, they handle daily concerns
• Are not threatened by conflict or criticism
• Able to leave a relationship with relative ease once it is over
• Able to administer punishment, although they're not interested in doing so
• Likely to respect other's needs for space and privacy

All of these strengths describe me, especially the self-confidence, optimism, ability to listen, and respect for space/privacy.  The odd man out is "Are not threatened by conflict or criticism."  This is becoming more and more true as I've matured, but I was very concerned with what people thought of me while growing up. 

This had a lot to do with my family - I was an only child with two very logical and caring, yet emotionally insensitive parents.  I took everything they said as fact, listened to them without forming my own opinions, and only encountered their feelings when they were under duress (or when dad was excited about a sporting event).  When I encountered emotion in others, I didn't know how to handle it.

All in all, the world was loud and crazy and people just made it that much more random.  Making it worse, I realized I was different and felt that was a bad thing.  So, I hid inside my elaborate inner world and learned how to conform externally.  Spoiler: it got better.

That's all for now.  I refuse to commit to a schedule or even my next topic, but here are a few ideas I want to write about eventually: ISTP Weaknesses, self-confidence, formative entertainment experiences, What do you mean I'm not ISTJ?

Until next time,

Taz