What I’ve Learned Lately #11

On dry cleaning, understanding, changing, and reading.

Every now and then, I write a letter about what I’ve learned lately. This was the eleventh one, sent on May 10, 2015.

Dry Cleaning

I was hungry, so I stepped outside. On my way to the café around the corner, a reckless impulse hit me: what if I picked up all of the dry cleaning right now?

The impulse was reckless because there was a lot of dry cleaning to pick up — almost two years’ worth, dropped off in a crumpled heap earlier that week. Meanwhile, I was without reinforcements: no duffel bag slung over my shoulder, no accidental errand companion at my side. Yet I knew it was now or, probably, never. Would there ever come a time when I calmly felt like doing something I had absolutely no desire to do?

I bought two “healthy” treats from the café and ate them as I walked down the street, radiating grim determination. I arrived at my destination and handed over two slips — one lavender, one spearmint. The attendant stepped over to the racks and plucked clusters of plastic-sheathed shirts and suit jackets. She made a few trips back and forth, eyes wider every time. Danke schön, I said at the end, and bowed to the pile of forty-some articles of clothing on the counter, bundling them into an unwieldy embrace. The attendant laughed nervously as I headed out the door.

I stumbled home holding a plastic mountain in my arms. Sweaters slipped from the mountain’s core and dropped to the dirt. I picked them up, defeated. I rested, winded, every few blocks; then, every few steps. I didn’t keep track of time, because time had ceased to exist, but the several-block walk probably took me close to 45 minutes. Finally, I spotted a gridded metal cage protecting the young tree a few doors down from where I live. As close as I was, I could go no further. I leaned against a bike rack next to the tree, my stomach and the waist-high pipe sandwiching precious clothing seldom worn, and tried to hang them from the gridded cage faster than they could fall to the pebbles and browning pink petals below.

Then, I marched to the apartment, holding just a few articles of clothing instead of forty. The rest hung outside, waiting patiently. As I opened the apartment door, Erik awoke from the nap he’d begun before I embarked on my unplanned quest — which felt in that moment like lifetimes ago — and asked if I needed help. I said I’d be fine, and marched out the door for the next batch, and the next. A few trips later, the plastic mountain huddled on our couch, intact; gleaming. I glowered, sweating. Erik asked, gently, why didn’t you take a cab? Startled, I told him the truth: it hadn’t even occurred to me.

Understanding

I recently added a new project to my to-do app: “Understand myself.” In some lights, it’s actually quite an old project, but I’m being official about it now. So that’s new, at least.

I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about types. I read Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before and discovered that I’m an Obliger (obviously); I revisited my Meyers-Briggs type (INFJ) on a tip from a coach and found a lot more to learn from it. In each case, I’ve found it intensely relieving to see myself for a moment as a coherent human being, one whose strengths and weaknesses make sense together. A package deal.

A few weeks ago, a friend referred to me as an “empathetic misanthrope,” which so delighted me that I’ve been repeating it ever since. At the time, it felt intuitively right. Looking up the definition of “misanthrope” just now, I briefly recoiled; “hater of humankind”?! And then I shrugged: well, sometimes.

Expectations are at the heart of this seeming contradiction in terms. Fortunately, both Better Than Before and the INFJ report I read spent time on that connection. The extended version of the report claims:

The main problem for INFJs is that they can often be too idealistic when it comes to other people and too demanding when it comes to themselves…the INFJ is likely to set the bar very high and not everyone can meet his or her expectations. If this happens, the INFJ may feel very disappointed and may even resort to insults or, at the very least, sarcasm.

Meanwhile, Better Than Before suggests that although “Obligers can sometimes do things for the sake of others that they couldn’t do for themselves,” there is a limit: “Obligers, in fact, may reach a point of Obliger rebellion, a striking pattern in which they abruptly refuse to meet an expectation.”

This is a sequence I’ve seen play out many times: I pour myself into something and then one day, I’m just done. Or, I’m reliably warm and bright with others until I crater, suddenly, into cynicism. These turns always feel like a betrayal of my true self, which is why I found these books refreshing. Maybe my true self is all of those things — a package deal. But the package can shape-shift depending on the expectations I consciously set for myself and others. To start, I’m experimenting with reordering my life so as not to assume infinite energy. There are limits, and I’m starting to know them.

Changing

Quietly, I’ve made big changes on two fronts.

On the work front: two weeks ago, I moved from SoundCloud’s strategy team to a new role as a product manager here. The idea dawned slowly and clicked suddenly, and now I’m here, and so happy.

As far as side-projects go: after six book selections across several years, I recently said goodbye to 24-Hour Bookclub, an occasional online reading flashmob I started back in 2012. I also made the end of /mentoring (marked by the publication of my essay, “On Mentoring,” in The Manual last October) more visible by updating my site. I know that tendrils of those projects still curl across the internet, but closing the front door to each one still felt like a big deal. As I wrote in one farewell post:

While 24-Hour Bookclub once stood for joy, and while the memories still do, I have to admit that since the last reading in June 2014, I’ve felt more obligation than anticipation. It’s time to let go; I will. By really and truly ending, I hope to celebrate everything we built together while opening up space for whatever may be next.

Here’s to whatever may be next.

Reading, and Other Pursuits

I’ve been inhaling a new book by Heidi Julavits — The Folded Clock — and reveling in its mischievous honesty. At one point, she writes, “I edit and teach and at times desire to be a clothing designer or an artist (one who doesn’t draw or paint or sew) and I write everything but poetry and I am a mother and a social maniac and a misanthrope and a burgeoning self-help guru…,” so you can see why it might appeal to me. I’ve highlighted 71 passages and I’m not even finished yet. My thanks to Meaghan for the indirect recommendation.

Playing Big, by Tara Mohr, helped me to understand my hopes and fears, as well as the obstacles to them, more deeply than ever before. Mohr is a leadership coach, and her words reinforced the process I’ve been able to go through with a coach of my own through The Coaching Fellowship, a (mostly) pro bono program open to women 25–35. That experience has been an incredible gift; I recommend it to anyone who’s eligible and feels even a glimmer of interest.

In very important news: I recently started a magazine with my friend Christina Xu. The magazine exists solely to pressure her to write regularly, which so far, she’s been doing. (Christina, by the way, is the one who ingeniously identified me as an empathetic misanthrope.) Her first two pieces are extraordinary:

• “What I Care About When I Care About Tea”
• “Signal, Space, Structure: Designing for Communities of Interest”

Finally, here are three podcasts I’ve been enjoying lately:

• Dear Sugar: advice and stories from real life, shared by people who know themselves deeply.
• Every Branch: conversations about living as whole people, between two close friends.
• The Broad Experience: interviews about women, the workplace, and success. (At SoundCloud, we occasionally convene a podcast club just to talk about episodes of TBE.)

Thank you for reading this, and for being here. I’m grateful for the chance to share my stories and idiosyncrasies and great loves with you.

until next time, and always —
Diana