Monday, July 22, 2013

Who’s On Your Team?



I have written about this subject before but I fear I have failed miserably at getting my idea across that the human personality is very complex and always in state of flux or change. As we go through life circumstances cause change in things that we do and how we go about them.

A simple example for me is Walt the Woodworker who was part of my personality for a long time when I had the physical space to actually have a decent shop with all the tools. Now Walt does not exist on his own, he is only how I perceive that part of my makeup. Walt is now retired because it is simply not practical to have a shop in your apartment and I also have lost the desire to do woodworking because quality wood is very hard to acquire now and it also is very costly. 

So you probably have similar people in your makeup such as Terry the Tennis Guy or Gal who may no longer play because a physical injury makes that difficult or perhaps Terry still plays but at a slower pace now and does so in a social environment like a club.

One of my most unfavourite members of my team is Helen the Housekeeper. At times, I want to shoot her because she is just plain lazy and her picture would appear next to the word procrastination in the dictionary. Of course, she is not real but she is part of my makeup partially due to the fact that I am the youngest of three boys and I was spoiled by my Mom and I still am not good at making my bed and doing the dishes. I no longer have a dishwasher so Helen can’t use that trick of hiding them for a week inside the dishwasher. 

But my Helen is getting better since I have tried to address that problem by trying some of those e-cloths and getting better dish scrubbers and using hydrogen peroxide along with anti-bacterial soap so when she gets around to doing the dishes they are at least much cleaner than before. Perhaps you have a Helen the Housekeeper that is as bad as mine but hopefully you are not as lazy as I am.

Another one whose picture is on top is Pierre the Chef. I quickly found out that I am no Pierre since I am more of just a short order cook who can make unique stuff with my microwave, barbecue, Zuko pop maker and J A Henckels environmentally friendly skillet. So he has kind of evolved in to a blend of personalities that would include Baxter the Baker and Luigi Tartufo the Sing in the Kitchen Guy (just the guy that prepares the stuff to cook) and end up being more like Rambler the Hash Slinger which is what I do best so I have found after all these years. You may be like this as well in your evolution of culinary expertise because we all burnt a few grilled cheese sandwiches along the way.

The other picture is another member of my particular team (over 50 at last count, not all active). I refer to him as Otto the Out of Left Field Guy. He used to scare the b’Jesus out of me and some of my friends because I couldn't get my head around what he was up to. He represents the creative juices that flow in the back areas of the brain and he always seem to be the most active about 4 in the morning. Matt the Musician and Gus the Guitar player seem to think he makes them a better musician but it is hard to know if you are actually playing better at that time of the morning.

Recently I penned a few songs based on what “Otto” was saying I should try and lo and behold they are not bad. Max the Music Composer, Matt, Gus and Chuckie the Computer Geek are all working on that project now.

Yep, it does sound like I have a few screws loose but I know that isn’t the case. 

As you get older you sometimes actually get a better perspective on where you are travelling in this trip called life. I like what I see now.

And Raymond the Writer has had a lot to do with making things much clearer. Sitting down at the computer keyboard and writing whatever comes to mind has been a very enjoyable journey  and especially when Gorby the Gamer, Chuckie and Infinity the Internet Explorer learned how to share better.

I do have a better understanding of who I am now. I can identify the players on my team and whether they are active or just retired. I think what really slowed the process down was the fact that one player that we all have can take too much time in your life. That would be Darth Vader the Guy We Don’t Like Much. He is really just negative waves, the dark side and the roadblock to getting anything useful out of one’s life. When you learn how to shut him up you are going in the right direction.

So you might want to play this game and get to know yourself a little better and sit down with a pen and paper or keyboard and screen and just go through life and identify your team players. You will possibly run into your Freddie the Fisherman, Phil the Photographer, JC the Skier, Bran the Businessman (hated that guy, good friends with Darth) and a whole host of others that are not part of my team.

We are all different individuals and the sum of our experiences and that is why we are all so unique and thank goodness for that. If we were only one of 4 personalities we would likely all be accountants, lawyers, politicians, doctors and engineers. No they are not all bad. The point is that if you don’t open yourself up to your Otto the Out of Left Field Guy you do become more one dimensional in how you do things and that is not much fun.

So explore who you are and were and embrace the members of your team that make you special. There isn't another person out there exactly like you and that is what makes the human race so damn interesting.

Time to end this subject, sing it Sheryl.

…all I wanna’ doOo is have some fun…

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