Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Introducing Idiosyncratic Me

So, I've explained the whole "Unheeded Prophetess" thing..... but what about the "Idosyncratic" thing? Let's explore......

id⋅i⋅o⋅syn⋅cra⋅sy

/ˌɪdiəˈsɪŋkrəsi, -ˈsɪn-/ [id-ee-uh-sing-kruh-see, -sin-]

–noun, plural -sies.

1. a characteristic, habit, mannerism, or the like, that is peculiar to an individual.
2. the physical constitution peculiar to an individual.
3. a peculiarity of the physical or the mental constitution, esp. susceptibility toward drugs, food, etc.

The Idiosyncratic Personality Type:

The Idiosyncratic type represents a particular irrational strategy for obtaining happiness.

Desires/ Pleasures:
  • non-conformity
  • dreaming
  • the spirit
  • eccentricity
  • freethinking
  • idiosyncratic feelings and belief systems, worldview, and approach to life
  • odd habits
  • self-direction
  • independence
  • the extrasensory
  • the supernatural
  • abstract and speculative thinking
  • being inner-directed
  • observing others
  • new experiences and feelings
  • rapture
  • freedom from rules
Fears/ Distresses:
  • conformity
  • convention
  • tradition
  • how other people react to them
  • that others think them strange
  • old belief systems
  • joining
  • affiliation
  • adapting
  • accepting or espousing anyone else's principles and beliefs
  • standard explanations
  • ridicule
  • doubt
  • uncertainty
  • disillusionment
  • the "regular" world
  • narrow-minded people
  • normal behavior standards
  • others' expectations
  • accepting authority
Needs:
  • needs to march to a distinctive beat, different from the conventional rhythms that most people follow
  • needs to be tuned into and sustained by their own feelings and belief systems, whether or not others accept or understand their particular world view or approach to life
  • needs to be self-directed and independent
  • needs to avoid convention; needs an interesting, unusual, often eccentric lifestyle
  • needs to be open to anything; needs the occult, the extrasensory, and the supernatural
  • needs to engage in abstract and speculative thinking
  • needs to be keen observers of others, particularly sensitive to how other people react to them
  • needs to avoid accepting the customary explanations of what's going on in this world
  • needs to avoid being locked into the accepted explanations and interpretations that seem unequivocally true to most people
  • needs to live their lives according to the sensations, feelings, and ideas that spring from inside them
  • needs to be a nonconformist
  • needs to seek the company of like-minded others in order to be more comfortable in life
  • needs to avoid "joining"; needs to avoid affiliating or conforming
  • needs to avoid accepting or espousing anyone else's principles and beliefs
  • needs to heed their inner voices, not those of other people
  • needs to avoid basing their self-esteem on following protocol or being correct from someone else's point of view
  • needs to build a strange, eccentric lifestyle
  • needs to be indifferent to what others think about their habits
  • needs to avoid trying to fit in
  • needs to reject standard explanations and conventions and rely on inner experience alone to assess the nature of the real world
  • needs to question and wonder
  • needs to to reinvent the universe in search of reality and truth
  • needs to seek emotional experience where the emotions are felt in all their intensity for their own sake
  • needs mind/emotional/spiritual expansion
  • needs new experiences to send them to new peaks of feeling and awareness of their inner being
  • needs to test the limits of emotional and spiritual experience
  • needs to always give priority to their inner emotional experience over what others consider to be objective external reality
  • needs to be free from rules and conformist expectations 
Dang, I was going to expound on this, but the info above pretty much sums things up.  I have no problem with admitting that I'm an idiosyncratic and eclectic (i.e. weird) individual.  I just don't "fit" in anywhere, which is a blessing, but also at times a curse.  I've been told that I'm interesting, which is what makes me special, but those interesting qualities that people love about me are the same qualities that drive people insane.  People like to be able to classify and categorize so that people or situations fit somewhere in their minds and make predictions about what's coming next.  Well, unpredictable is a common occurrence when it comes to dealing with me.  Basically, I'm un-boxable.

Although I'm sure I've always been a little different (ex. I ate Wheat Chex while my siblings at Capt'n Crunch, I preferred books over movies, etc.) the first time I really remember wanting to express my idiosyncratic nature was when I was 18 and wanted a body piercing, solely for the reason that it just didn't fit with my nerd, goodie-two-shoes, quiet personality from high school (I know every 16 year old has a mandatory navel ring these days, but back in the mid-90's it was still kind of novel).  It wasn't anything I showed off on the regular, just something that I knew I had (ok, so I did wear mid-drift bearing shirts when appropriate).  And it went on from there, to more piercings (at one point I had a total of 5 non-ear piercings.... now I'm down to 2), to dreadlocks, to elaborate tattoos.... you get the idea.  But then I went and became an attorney (can you say "incongruous"?)  Along with the physical, though, also came the mental..... my views of the world, my likes and dislikes, everything.  You can pretty much bet that if it's mainstream, I really don't care for it too much.  It actually got to be a problem in my relationship with my high school sweetheart (I promised I wouldn't discuss the "D" word) because as I got older, I got weirder and weirder as I got more comfortable with expressing my idiosyncrasies. 

So this is just fair warning to you, loved ones.... I don't choose words lightly (self professed logophile here), thus the reason the title of this blog is so fitting because this is who I AM.... like it, love it, or leave it.  There may be times where what I write leaves you scratching your head or thinking I'm crazy, but remember.... they thought the Unheeded Prophetess was crazy, too (watch out for that horse).

No comments:

Post a Comment