Pre-travel Stress

One of the things I don't much like about me is my innate talent for procrastinating. At least on certain items.

I've been stressing to the gills because my new Danish passport has been conspicuously absent-- repeated "we don't knows" from the Danish consulate, eventually replaced by "a set of applications (including mine) were misplaced and delayed." Swell. I leave on Tuesday (5/20). Another phone call today-- the missing passports have finally arrived at the consulate in Houston. Of course, if they mail it, they are required to use registered mail, which slows things down-- so now I'm looking at spending tomorrow driving 200 miles to Houston, picking up the passport, turning around and driving 200 miles back again.

This, of course, could all have been avoided if I had started on the whole process back in January (when the passport expired) rather than in March.

Meanwhile I am trying to field the regular calls from my mom who has suddenly "remembered" all the nice things she used to be able to buy in Phoenix, but which are not available in Spain. The list gets ever longer, and my suitcase gets ever fuller.

I really am leaving soon. This really is the last entry, for a while.

HSPs and Myers-Briggs Personality Types

I was excited to read that one of the things that very likely will be offered at the West Coast HSP Gathering is a chance to take the Myers-Briggs test, and have the results "interpreted" by Jacquelyn Strickland. I have already had the test administered twice (and came out INFJ, twice, although there was some debate on the "S" vs. "N" preference the first time) in the past 10 years, but it's the interpretation that interests me. And especially getting the interpretation done in a setting where there are likely to be "others like me." INFJs are quite rare, accounting for one about 1% of the population.

From my interaction/participation in HSP groups, I have periodically seen surveys done on personality type, within those groups. Of course, these have been pretty "informal" polls, and keep in ind that the number of people to respond to them might have been 200, or fewer. But still, the results have been quite "telling," at least for me...

MBTI types INFP and INFJ are the predominant types in the HSP community-- at least the online HSP communities. I can't, of course, speak to whether or not these distributions would hold for HSPs who do not use the Internet as a research, contact and participation tool. Anyway, by loose extrapolation of several polls (at different times) it seems that type INFP accounts for as many as 25-30% of online HSPs, while INFJ accounts for something on the order of 12-15%. This is certainly statistically significant, in so far as none of the other types account for more than maybe 5-6%.

It is also interesting that (to the small degree I have been able to gather this data) types INFP and INFJ predominate even more heavily in the Adult Indigo groups. It's almost a "requirement" to be an NF-type (Intuitive-Feeling) to be an Indigo.

I love the idea of being among people where these rare traits are "common" rather than an "oddity."

The Travelling HSP

I sent an email to a dear friend and fellow HSP with my travel plans, and she wrote back and wondered how I could "handle" all that travel. I have heard from more than a few HSPs that travel is one thing that "upsets their systems" rather easily.

I am, perhaps, a little different from most, in that I was "trained" to travel. My parents were constantly on the go until I was 18-- and we moved all the time. At times I felt as much at home in some airport, as I did wherever we happened to be living. Whereas there are things that can make me overload easily, travel is so second nature to me, that it causes little more anxiety for me than... maybe going to the grocery.

In general, I try to relax myself by planning what I have control over (convenient times of the day, plenty of extra time so I don't rush, pack snacks in my carry on)... and otherwise sleep through the rest. I always take several different kinds of reading material, so I have something that fits whatever mood I might be in. I always ask for a window seat so I can lean against the bulkhead and sleep. Easier said than done-- I am 6'4" tall. If there's a choice between 40 minutes and 2 hours to make a connection, I choose the the flight with the two hour connection, so I don't have to stress out and run if the flight is a bit late. If I end up having to sit and wait, I focus on relaxing. I have missed enough connecting flights through delays that I know that "the world won't end" if it happens, and I'm very familiar with the procedure of getting rescheduled, and possibly getting a (free-- airline has to pay for it) hotel room overnight.

Somehow, I am perhaps also fortunate in that I am not terribly troubled by jetlag, on transatlantic flights. And that's a blessing, because it means that I don't end up "wasting" much time with getting acclimatized to a different time zone.

Hiatus

Time, it would seem, has once again run away from me. And here I am, putting in a perfunctory appearance purely for the purpose of saying that I won't be updating much, over the next few weeks. Or months.

This summer-- in spite of being broke-- I will be doing a lot of travelling. Some of it will be "time travelling." I will be spending a week in Spain, with my parents, in an area where I have not been since 1985, but where I lived for almost 4 years as a teen. A trip to the past. A trip to what could have been my reality. A trip to something I consciously turned my back on. Once upon a time. How will it be, now? It is the first time I will be visiting my parents since they moved from Phoenix, permanently back to Europe

Then I will be in Denmark. My roots. Even after all these years, many parts of me are more Danish than anything else. My sense of egalitarianism. My softspokenness. I've lived in the US for 22 years, but I still think of myself as Danish. Perhaps it's not so much because I am "Danish" as it is that I am "not American." Denmark gives me a strange peace. My S.O. says I change, when I am over there. Like I become more comfortable in my own skin. Like I fit in. Like my particular type of assertiveness which seems too "soft" in Texas suddenly becomes "proportionate" to my surroundings, and I become "just right," as a human being. I will be staying at my aunt's house-- an old "summerhouse" that was built in 1939 and now is a type of family "community property," used as a timeshare by about 10-15 people. I played there as a kid. It was always a treat to go spend the weekend at my aunt's house. My aunt raised me, in part, and offered me a glimpse of what "healthy love" looked like-- just enough that I know when I don't have it, and that I want it. It is neither the past, the present, nor the future-- time stops; ceases to exist; becomes immaterial when I am there.

And then I go to California, after just a few days back in Texas. That's the future. The continuation of my Journey to the Self. A step from "studying" the HSP community as an observe, to being in it, and looking for ways in which I might be able to build a (working) future as a part of it. Helping others, help themselves. Maybe it's about learning; maybe it's about fellowship; maybe it's just about finding a "place" in space and time. Maybe I am looking for "someone." A "connection."