detail of Lips Open into Certain Gendered Sounds (2016) by Ragnhildur Johanns
List of things my family hates about me:
I lie.
I misconstrue conversations.
I don’t remember what I say.
I exaggerate.
I’m manipulative.
They have all told me this. Read more
I spent ten days preparing for my court case, telling myself each day that tomorrow I wouldn’t need to prepare anymore. But when I get so focused on something I can’t get enough of it. I bound out of bed in the morning because I’m so excited to think about it and have new ideas to organize. And then I thought: this is why autistic people are so effective at what they do. But also: this is such a dangerous skill to have. Because it’s destroying my life. Where is the rest of my life while I’m doing this
When I started doing research at Harvard, I noticed that almost every family study used poor families as subjects. I assumed the funding skewed that way, but it didn’t — even race-based grants used poor families.
When I asked my PI why, she explained that high-earning families almost never participate. That’s when I understood something about the research: it’s parents who are the problem in families, not children, and Institutional Review Boards don’t approve research that might destabilize a parent. So obvious parenting patterns are ignored in favor of centering solutions around the children – as if they are the problem. Read more
I don’t use personality type systems the way they’re taught. Memorizing what each letter means is just the entry point. After that, it’s faster to stop using the system directly and start using pattern recognition instead. Read more
Right now the WNBA has two leagues inside one league. The older cohort of players spent their careers going overseas in the off-season just to survive, building the sport when there was no money in it. The newer cohort arrived when Caitlin Clark did — with audiences already built during college and the economics transformed overnight from NIL.
I watch the older players complaining about lack of recognition and no retirement plan, and it makes me want to look away. Because I get why they’re angry but I don’t want to be them. Read more
A few months ago, someone emailed asking to interview me about my writing routine. His name was Hao. He runs a publication called Famous Writing Routines. I said sure.
I’m publishing this interview because it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever accidentally said about writing. I don’t know what it felt like for Hao, but he never published it. So here it is: Read more
Almost everyone is mistyped where it matters most. Not in a fun, abstract way — in the exact place that’s holding them back.
When you’re mistyped, you build a life around the wrong assumptions. You try to fix the wrong problems. You expect the wrong things from the people you love. It’s subtle, which is why even people who have studied type for years get it wrong. I wrote about personality type for a decade and still mistyped people I was closest to.
So I’m having live personality type office hours for paid subscribers. Read more
detail of Blue-Yellow-Red from Colorfields (1974) by Gerhard Richter
This past week I culled the email list of people who recently took my personality type test. I had to sort through a lot of snippy emails that a filter won’t decide on. Example:
First name: poop
Last name: poop
First name: I don’t
Last name: Give a fuck
My mom recently mailed me a stack of magazines from my first job as a columnist. As I was flipping through them I saw something I hadn’t realized at the time: the magazine was rewriting who I was.
You can see it happening on the pages. My bio changes. The illustrations change. The column itself changes. At one point, after I had the baby, the managing editor told me I should start writing for women’s magazines. In another issue my bio calls me a “former” executive, as if my career were already over.
At the time I didn’t notice any of it. Now I can’t unsee it. So I’ve laid out the pages along with what I see now when I read them. Read more
Most people don’t mistype strangers. They mistype the people they love.
That’s what I realized after years of using personality type in parenting, partnerships, and work. I knew all the frameworks, but I still got my family members wrong over and over again. The problem wasn’t the system. The problem was that I was emotionally invested in the wrong version of them.
This is one of the biggest weaknesses of personality typing: it only works if you’re honest with yourself, and most of us aren’t. When we’re close to someone, we don’t type them based on how they see the world. We type them based on how they make us feel. Read more