Weekend discoveries

Category : blog
weekend discoveries, enneagram

I discovered some fun things this weekend:

1. Apparently at age 40, I can no longer have a couple of casual drinks and emerge unscathed. This happens exactly once a month or so, but having more than one drink means I will: a) get zero sleep (plus bonus heart palpitations!), and b) feel like I got hit by a bus the next morning. And all the next day. It doesn’t matter how buzzed or not buzzed I feel, how able I am to attend volleyball practice straight after happy hour; the end result is the same and that end result is TORTURE.

2. One of my 10-almost-11-year-olds must have overheard me saying I was thinking of not drinking again because of the bus feeling and the bad sleeping and all (I am extremely protective of my sleep, you guys). Her little ADHD brain has completely fixated on whether or not I’m ever going to drink again, because “you said don’t sleep good and you feel so bad the next day” and also “I don’t want you to be like this:” [stumbles around the kitchen].” So I’m really excited for the day she mentions this to someone at school so they can think I am a complete lush when honestly I’m just a fucking lightweight.

3. Unpopular opinion: I prefer springing forward to falling back. I see you all complaining about losing an hour of sleep and how tired you are. But here’s the thing. There’s no “extra” hour of sleep in the fall when you’re a parent, so after the fall time change, the kids just get up at their regular time, which is OH LOOK, an hour earlier than it was yesterday. That day is the longest day of my life, except for that day we got on a plane at 6:30 a.m. and flew to Vegas, arrived seemingly minutes after we’d taken off, and by 4 p.m. I was like, “Wait, did we just get here TODAY?” I had been awake for what felt like 47 hours, but the answer was yes, we had indeed just arrived that day.

Anyway, since we don’t have anywhere to be on a Sunday morning, we don’t ever feel like we’re losing an hour of sleep. And, bonus, there’s one fewer hour in the day until I can go to bed again (see again: very protective of my sleep and kinda just love going to bed. May also be perceived as lazy.).

4. I took an enneagram test last year and came off as a 9. I wasn’t surprised, as nines are mainly motivated by conflict avoidance. I related a lot to the descriptions I read in The Enneagram: A Journey of Self-Discovery, and my husband may have said, “holy shit” when I read about nines’ tendencies to disengage, disassociate, and one particular part that said – and I paraphrase – “May not have been hugged enough as a child.” I mean, it wasn’t wrong; I do have personal space issues. (Sorry, Mom and Dad. Not your doing, I’m sure.)

But a recent conversation uncovered that nines and fours are often misidentified, and you guys, I think I’m actually a four. No, I’m sure of it. While the nine, The Peacemaker, is “the easygoing, self-effacing type: receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent,” and yes, I am most of those, the four, The Individualist, is “the sensitive, withdrawn type: expressive (check), dramatic (check), self-absorbed (CHECK), and temperamental (what? No. Okay, CHECK.).”

I feel seen.

There’s much more to it, but on the surface that I have barely scratched, reading about the four is like looking in a mirror:

  • Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance (holla!)
  • Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance, to create an
       identity (*fist bump*)

Hey, I didn’t say it was a fun mirror to look into.

5. Finally, like the enneagram, marriage is always a journey in discovery, and what I have discovered about my husband is he is the type of person who will be up for an hour or more in the morning before he realizes, “Hey! I haven’t made any coffee today!” And guys, I think I married a psychopath.

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