PERSONALITY TEST

I am feeling kind of a rush to get to bed considering its daylight savings night and we have 9:00 church in the morning. As is, one of the adults in our home has to get in the shower by 6:30 to get the process started to get everyone ready in time. (That 6:30 will be 5:30 tomorrow) I just wanted to check in with my blogging world (that I love so much). I often feel guilty enjoying everyone else's blogs when I don't keep mine up as often as I would like to. I thought I would share something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. As a matter of fact, I've been thinking about it a whole lot. You know those personality tests that are offered in self-help books, humanities classes, etc.? Sometimes the results come in the form of a color, other times in the form of an animal....Well, when I turned 18 and started working for the gym I took the test at one of my first staff meetings. This test changed my life. YELLOW- I was almost 100% yellow. This explained so much about myself.... how I love having a good time, hate commitments, am not by any means a list maker, I am a tad bit irresponsible, am a peace maker, am happy (if not thrilled at times) with a B in a class- I just love to learn, I am fine skipping breakfast and grabbing a bag of m&m's when I get hungry, the list goes on and on. At the age of 20 I married a totally dynamic young man (21) who was quite my opposite. I think this is one of the things I love most about him. He is, in terms of the personality test that I graded so many times as a manager to evaluate my employees, a RED. He is very task oriented, keeps a planner and sticks to it, loves an A and is disappointed with a B, loves to wake up early to eat a healthy breakfast, etc. Our opposite characteristics go on and on. HMMMM, I started to think, this RED stuff looks good- you accomplish more in life as a RED than a YELLOW! (You following me?) I started to make some changes. I started hitting the books really hard, applied for advances at work, overcommitted and tried to juggle anything and everything thrown at me. The results varied according to the task. Some successes and some crashes. When I overcommit, I loose control and fall. This is what I now know about myself. But still, my YELLOW, fly by the seat of my pants personality dominated. So, why am I bringing this up now? It is because I am now a mother of 3 and this conflict stares me in the face daily. I have children who like to wake up at the same time every day, drink out of the same cup, fork and plate, (WHY does it matter? I have never been concerned with routines like this) want to know what is on the agenda for the day and than hold me to what I say I am going to do, love, love, love routine, expect that a toy will be in the same location each time they go to look for it, etc. Organized, I am not. I can keep a clean home, but have a tough time putting things back in the same spot each time. Add to this the fact that it takes a lot of effort and planning to go anywhere or accomplish anything successfully. So there is a constant battle fighting between the Tami who is trying so hard keep a perfect house, clean kids, a productive schedule and responsibilities and the Tami who wants to let my hair down, turn on some music and dance or get down on the floor and play with my kids. BALANCE is what I am trying to achieve. I never imagined that I would have a daughter who thrives on organization and structure. Yes, I know that I was a child-development student. I know kids thrive on structure, I just never really, really thought about what it would mean for my life. It means that I, as a mother will have to restrain my Yellow self so much and strive to be more RED, BLUE, WHITE, whatever characteristic I need to be to help me more successfully run a home and teach my children. I am just curios if I took the test today, what color I would be.

There, you have it, my life in a nutshell. By the way, if you could be any animal, what would you be? I've taken that one in a psychology class. I always want to say a turtle- debunk that one!