Photo by Matteo Grando on Unsplash
My little sister often talks about how there isn’t a subject in the world she can bring up that I don’t know a little bit about. She’s wrong of course, and I thought she was calling me a know-it-all, but she was honestly amazed at how much knowledge I have crammed in my head. I’m an input junky. I like to say that my knowledge is an inch deep and a mile wide. I’m the sort of person who is watching The Tudors and googling every element I find fascinating at the same time to see what Wikipedia and other resources have to say. I’m constantly fighting the tide of incoming podcasts because I’m subscribed to entirely too many, but I can never unsubscribe from them. It’s not necessarily FOMO (fear of missing out) but just fascination. As someone who has worked in book culture previously, I’ve marveled at the idea that I could stop everything in my life and only read books for the rest of my existence and still only encounter a drop in the ocean of knowledge that exists. Never mind books that have been lost to the ages like those in The Great Library of Alexandria.
Which leads nicely into context and my appreciation and researching of the past. Because I’ve always been a book nerd despite having trouble reading at a young age, I’ve always been well steeped in the past. I grew up on books like Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, the American Girl series, and Nancy Drew. Each has a specific historical context that makes the thinking and actions of that time make sense. The more you read, the more you see trends repeat though people insist it’s a new issue. The rights of indigenous people, gender roles, and bearing witness to significant moments of history are as interwoven into everyday life now as they were when Lucy Maud Montgomery published her first novel.
There used to be a time when I loved talking about politics and current events. I’m a public radio junkie, in fact, it’s the only radio I listen to, and I was always the friend walking into a party saying, “did you hear that such and such country just had their first democratic elections?” And then because no one knew what I was talking about, having to explain why it was a big deal. Moments in history have always had those effects on me. I walk in the room exclaiming “the government just officially shut down” to be met with blank stares. I have three floor-to-ceiling bookcases with a handful more of half-sized littered around my one-bedroom apartment. My ex-boyfriend used to ask me when I would be donating them, and I would look at him in horror. Each book is a special treasure, especially those that haven’t been read yet. Each year I go to the Printer’s Row Lit Fest. A few years ago, I held a book that was older than the United States of America. That was a spiritual feeling. As a lapsed Catholic, I have a strange idea of spiritual. I often feel it while traveling to a new place, learning about new cultures, history, food, and more. I’ve only recently discovered the bliss of traveling alone and have done so to New Orleans and Dublin. To be able to sit in my thoughts and feelings, to let it stir around inside of me, rather than trying to package it to share with another, its when I feel the happiest inside my skin.
That’s not to say that I don’t play well with others. I had to learn how to. I come from an awkward family. So, I learned how to navigate spaces on their behalf. In my career, I’m the logistics person. I’m the one who can look at a project and figure out what it needs big picture but also all of the little things that have to go right in order for it to succeed. Unfortunately, some people think of this as raining on their parade but that’s not at all what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to help everyone succeed but alerting them to the possible pitfalls ahead.
You would think that would dampen the creative side of my brain where the ideas come from. You would be wrong. All the podcasts, books, movies, public radio news, etc. swirl around in my head making a beautiful stew where anything is possible. I’m known for having to-do lists that are roughly 20-30 pages long, in part because most of them are ideas I’d like to make a reality. It also means that I see needs before others. When I started working at the Actors Gymnasium, a circus organization, we knew that there were other circus organizations out there in the US but had no real concept of who and how many. So, I started keeping track of address and other contact information. When it was my turn for a barter student, this is often what I would have them work on, and I was chastised for not putting them to more effective work. Then the founders suddenly decided that they wanted to create a training program for people who wanted to do circus professionally. But they had no idea where those people were or how to contact them. I was able to hand them an excel full of 2,000 American circus schools complete with the mailing addresses and emails. It was the basis for the entire marketing campaign. I sent an email letting each school know about the program, we mailed materials to be hung up and passed out at the schools and the new program head called every location she could to follow up and answer questions. We had 91 serious applicants to a program that could only hold 18 students.
Honestly, these strengths, Input, Restorative, Context, Intellection, and Ideation, are at the very core of who I am. I can’t imagine myself without them. I wouldn’t be me. It’s nice to take a test that reaffirms what you like best (and struggle most) about yourself.
MarketingMichelle 