I'm a Four...
I'm not referencing my score on a coolness scale. I'm talking about the Enneagram. If you haven't heard of it, we must not know each other very well. Because I talk about it with some frequency. But you can check out this link for starters and get caught up: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com.
You're welcome.
So, as I was saying, I'm a four. There are nine personality types and they all have names, naturally. Wanna take a guess at what the fours are named?
The Artist.
Man...eerie, right?
Okay, so if you look at the link you'll see that Type Four is called The Individualist. And if you Googled it on your own, you might have seen that it's called The Romantic. I should have mentioned that there a bunch of different names depending on which site you visit. But the qualities are mostly the same. And I would argue that I'm as much an individualist and a romantic as I am an artist. So it works. I just didn't want anyone thinking I hadn't vetted my sources before plunking them down in my blog.
So here is why I chose to focus on being a four for this post.
I recently finished acting in a play with a local theater company. We did The Importance of Being Earnest. It was a role I'd wanted to do for a long time. I used to read this play when I lived in Los Angeles. It was my "take a hot bath and read a play" go-to staple. Now, I was never the theater major who made a habit of reading plays in my free time. Some of my friends were good like that. I read plays for class or when I was in them and that was generally it. With the almighty exception of Shakespeare. So the fact that I was reading plays in the bath should tell you how much I was craving a theater connection.
Fast forward to this past fall when I saw that - lo and behold - a local theater group was going to do the very play I had so longed to do! I hawked that group's Facebook page, waiting for the auditions. Then I found out who the director was and it was the assistant director from the last show I was in! The Universe wanted me in this show. It was Destiny.
So I auditioned. I felt pretty good. Unlike a previous (and sadly recent) audition for another show, I did not go through my whole audition with a size sticker stuck down the whole left side of my torso. That not one soul opted to point out to me, despite it's glaringly obvious presence (which I noted as soon as I got home). So that was a win. I went home and prepared to wait. Like Inigo Montoya, I hate waiting. And I'm bad at it. I checked my email every ten minutes. I pulled myself together and vowed to wait and only check it every twenty minutes. And failed. Because when you're waiting on something important, ten minutes actually feels like twenty minutes. It's misleading.
Saturday night came and went. No callback. I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to fulfill this dream at this time. I woke up Sunday and tried to make a plan to put something else productive in place of the rehearsals I'd hoped to be adding to my calendar. But I'll tell you - Sunday morning sucked. I was super bummed! And my cat saw right through all my bravado. All five minutes of it. And he was not super supportive of the pity party that came next.
But then...Then I got a message on Facebook - that holiest of information superhighways. It was the show's producer and the director contacting me because my email had bounced back. They wanted to give me the part! I stopped breathing. Then I remembered that was bad and started breathing again. I quickly responded that I was thrilled and thanked them. And then sent my correct email address. And just like that, Sunday rocked. It was the best of all the days! Yay, Sunday!
The show ended about a week ago. It was the most fun I've had in awhile. It was the largest role I've gotten to play in decades. And it was the most I've felt like my whole self in so long it takes my breath away to dwell on it. How is it possible to feel more like yourself when you're pretending to be someone else? That should not make any sense. But that's always how I've felt when I've been acting.
Here are a few points about Fours: We think we are different from everyone else. For better and for worse. We are always trying to figure out who we are and how the things we feel inform our identity. One of the earliest realizations for me was that Fours feel everything dramatically. Just ask my parents if that applies to me or not. I mean, my brain created a fake memory of passing out after being stung by a bee. I was stung - I just didn't faint. But my brain merged in some other piece of info at the age of five and for decades I believed I fainted after being stung by that bee on the first day of kindergarten. Everything is important for a Four. For better and for worse. For real or for make-believe.
So knowing the director of a show I want to do takes on huge significance. It's meant to be! The waiting after an audition is massively stressful because I replay every moment back in my mind. A hundred things could have been better. Every ten minutes I don't hear something means it's over. Let me tell you - being a Four is exhausting. But it is not boring.
As a Four, I feel the loss of that show experience sharply. It did not help that I promptly got sick after the show closed. But it was not the surface-level issue of just being in a show. It was about the positive Four getting to quiet the negative Four inside me who has for years been suggesting that maybe acting was not something I was meant to spend so much time pursuing. It was about putting fresh life into a passion that has been weighed down and pushed aside by life and self-consciousness and tries that felt too much like failures.
Four years ago today I had surgery. It was kind of a big deal. I mean, I wrote a blog on it afterwards, so...But it occurred to me that maybe I just have the number "four" on my brain today. I do remember that I was adamant about having a quick recovery so I could get back to doing all the things that mattered to me. Things like walking more than a block at a time, doing yoga, lifting my 25 pound cat. I think - four years later - I'm experiencing a similar rush of adamant energy, but directed toward healing for my creative spirit instead of my physical body.
And so saying I'm a Four starts to take on an extra layer of meaning. The Four who has a flair for the dramatic is starting to sense that a different type of "surgery" has occurred. This time, giant, energy-sucking creative blocks have been removed. Just like with the fibroids, there isn't any guarantee they won't come back. As the negative Four randomly reminds me of that, the positive Four rallies for me to look at the results of the past four years. My recovery track record is pretty rockin. So I'm gonna go with that perspective for the time being.
If you've got any rally suggestions, or if you want to share your own reflections on anything in this post, please leave me some comments. :)
You're welcome.
So, as I was saying, I'm a four. There are nine personality types and they all have names, naturally. Wanna take a guess at what the fours are named?
The Artist.
Man...eerie, right?
Okay, so if you look at the link you'll see that Type Four is called The Individualist. And if you Googled it on your own, you might have seen that it's called The Romantic. I should have mentioned that there a bunch of different names depending on which site you visit. But the qualities are mostly the same. And I would argue that I'm as much an individualist and a romantic as I am an artist. So it works. I just didn't want anyone thinking I hadn't vetted my sources before plunking them down in my blog.
So here is why I chose to focus on being a four for this post.
I recently finished acting in a play with a local theater company. We did The Importance of Being Earnest. It was a role I'd wanted to do for a long time. I used to read this play when I lived in Los Angeles. It was my "take a hot bath and read a play" go-to staple. Now, I was never the theater major who made a habit of reading plays in my free time. Some of my friends were good like that. I read plays for class or when I was in them and that was generally it. With the almighty exception of Shakespeare. So the fact that I was reading plays in the bath should tell you how much I was craving a theater connection.
Fast forward to this past fall when I saw that - lo and behold - a local theater group was going to do the very play I had so longed to do! I hawked that group's Facebook page, waiting for the auditions. Then I found out who the director was and it was the assistant director from the last show I was in! The Universe wanted me in this show. It was Destiny.
So I auditioned. I felt pretty good. Unlike a previous (and sadly recent) audition for another show, I did not go through my whole audition with a size sticker stuck down the whole left side of my torso. That not one soul opted to point out to me, despite it's glaringly obvious presence (which I noted as soon as I got home). So that was a win. I went home and prepared to wait. Like Inigo Montoya, I hate waiting. And I'm bad at it. I checked my email every ten minutes. I pulled myself together and vowed to wait and only check it every twenty minutes. And failed. Because when you're waiting on something important, ten minutes actually feels like twenty minutes. It's misleading.
Saturday night came and went. No callback. I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to fulfill this dream at this time. I woke up Sunday and tried to make a plan to put something else productive in place of the rehearsals I'd hoped to be adding to my calendar. But I'll tell you - Sunday morning sucked. I was super bummed! And my cat saw right through all my bravado. All five minutes of it. And he was not super supportive of the pity party that came next.
But then...Then I got a message on Facebook - that holiest of information superhighways. It was the show's producer and the director contacting me because my email had bounced back. They wanted to give me the part! I stopped breathing. Then I remembered that was bad and started breathing again. I quickly responded that I was thrilled and thanked them. And then sent my correct email address. And just like that, Sunday rocked. It was the best of all the days! Yay, Sunday!
The show ended about a week ago. It was the most fun I've had in awhile. It was the largest role I've gotten to play in decades. And it was the most I've felt like my whole self in so long it takes my breath away to dwell on it. How is it possible to feel more like yourself when you're pretending to be someone else? That should not make any sense. But that's always how I've felt when I've been acting.
Here are a few points about Fours: We think we are different from everyone else. For better and for worse. We are always trying to figure out who we are and how the things we feel inform our identity. One of the earliest realizations for me was that Fours feel everything dramatically. Just ask my parents if that applies to me or not. I mean, my brain created a fake memory of passing out after being stung by a bee. I was stung - I just didn't faint. But my brain merged in some other piece of info at the age of five and for decades I believed I fainted after being stung by that bee on the first day of kindergarten. Everything is important for a Four. For better and for worse. For real or for make-believe.
So knowing the director of a show I want to do takes on huge significance. It's meant to be! The waiting after an audition is massively stressful because I replay every moment back in my mind. A hundred things could have been better. Every ten minutes I don't hear something means it's over. Let me tell you - being a Four is exhausting. But it is not boring.
As a Four, I feel the loss of that show experience sharply. It did not help that I promptly got sick after the show closed. But it was not the surface-level issue of just being in a show. It was about the positive Four getting to quiet the negative Four inside me who has for years been suggesting that maybe acting was not something I was meant to spend so much time pursuing. It was about putting fresh life into a passion that has been weighed down and pushed aside by life and self-consciousness and tries that felt too much like failures.
Four years ago today I had surgery. It was kind of a big deal. I mean, I wrote a blog on it afterwards, so...But it occurred to me that maybe I just have the number "four" on my brain today. I do remember that I was adamant about having a quick recovery so I could get back to doing all the things that mattered to me. Things like walking more than a block at a time, doing yoga, lifting my 25 pound cat. I think - four years later - I'm experiencing a similar rush of adamant energy, but directed toward healing for my creative spirit instead of my physical body.
And so saying I'm a Four starts to take on an extra layer of meaning. The Four who has a flair for the dramatic is starting to sense that a different type of "surgery" has occurred. This time, giant, energy-sucking creative blocks have been removed. Just like with the fibroids, there isn't any guarantee they won't come back. As the negative Four randomly reminds me of that, the positive Four rallies for me to look at the results of the past four years. My recovery track record is pretty rockin. So I'm gonna go with that perspective for the time being.
If you've got any rally suggestions, or if you want to share your own reflections on anything in this post, please leave me some comments. :)
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