Type A Personality, ESTP Meyers Briggs..Who God Made Me

I am the oldest child of 4 children, the oldest girl and I am married to the oldest child of 7, the oldest boy. I have traveled all over the United States with my parents when my mom and natural father were married as he raced Harness Horses and we lived from Florida to New York. My mom divorced and we moved to Arizona and then Nevada.

My mom married, my step-dad was drafted and we moved to Missouri and California. I married and we moved with my husbands military career.

I lost a child when I was 23 years old, it was devastating. I divorced. I remarried, I have endured many things and I have survived. To tell my story would take me writing a book for my family because I am pretty sure it would never sell & even if it did, no one would believe the life I have led!

But along the way of life, I learned to take care of myself and others. When my parents divorced & my mom worked, I helped take care of my siblings, I fed them dinner and I was not a good cook back then. As we got older, I was the protector of friends and family, I would read to neighbor kids, I enjoyed being able to help!

I have always been able to think on my feet while running in many different directions. The jobs I have held in my lifetime show my propensity for keeping busy...from working in hospitals and nursing homes to working as a police dispatcher to saving peoples lives.

In order to be able to do that one must have a type A personality, enjoy stress or even be a ESTP in Briggs Meyers. You have to be able to work quickly and not be bothered by what people think & people will always have an opinion. It doesn't mean you can't have feelings, it means you must be the one willing to step on toes to get the job done, explanations can come later.

I used to tell my trainee's that I will always be with them, I will lead them, I will teach them, I will make sure they are doing their job and the officer on the street feels confident in their abilities. While in training, I will never let them cause someone to get hurt & when I tell them to do something, they need to do so at that moment without questioning me...I have a reason for what I am telling them and we will discuss those reasons after the call. You have to be the one to react to a situation without weighing it in times of urgency.

As a police dispatcher I was always nice, but if someone called me to say they were going to shoot themselves, I had to have the ability to jog them into reality and sometimes that meant reaching into the pits and screaming at them.

Myers Briggs describes me as:
They often have an uncanny ability to respond appropriately in cases of emergencies, often having excellent reflexes. They act without thinking. They also tend to have natural mediating skills.

They are attuned to the environment and the myriad colours, textures, sounds, beauty and the sensuousness of it all. They are quite graceful and agile while moving through their environment. They love having fun and if things are too quiet they may provide the entertainment or distraction. They learn by imitation and are keen observers. They teach through example. Their attention will always go towards whatever provides the keenest impression on their senses.

This is pretty much who I am in a nutshell. People who know me know that and love me and know I am the go to person if you need help. It also means I don't always have the patience I should have, that I get frustrated when things aren't going as quickly as I like and I can get things done many people cannot or do not know how to do!

There are those people who not like me. Oh well, it doesn't affect who I am or how I behave. Then I have those people who know me and understand my impatience and why I do the things I do and how I do them and they love me for who I am in spite of my shortcomings (which as a Leo of course are few...hahaha).

People like Crystal, a young woman with family issues who wanted to dispatch so badly and couldn't do the job. I had to recommend her be terminated, Several years later she sent a letter to the department telling them how I had made a difference in her life, how I had been fair, non-judgmental and how she was now fulfilling her goal as a dispatcher.

Friends who have been so down and out, yet I have gone to their home just to sit with them until the darkness has passed.

Friends who have done something so stupid that I called them on it. Did I hurt their feelings? Yes! Did I mean to? No! Would I do it again to help them realize what they were doing to harm themselves? Yes! Trust me, they have done the same for me, it is called loving someone else!

People who have called me because they were so desperate to end their lives and yet after talking to me realized they had everything to live for.

I am the calm in the storm, the quiet in the chaos. I will make you mad at me sometime by something I say, something I do or my beliefs and if I do and it makes you think outside your box or call me on it, that's okay, together we can teach each other!

I never maliciously say things to hurt people or do things to hurt people, it isn't my style. But I am blunt, I am honest and I am fair. If I hurt you, let me know. I don't take offense easily.

Am I truly a Type A personality? I don't know. I value my relationships with family and friends that I have. I am not a workaholic, but I do love working. I am impatient but not always...when my husband is impatient,. I am calm. When the kids need patience I am there. When I taught school especially junior high, I was tough and fair and the kids loved me. I believe we need money, but it is not everything in life!

Do I get angry? Yes, don't you? We all have our buttons that can be pushed. Mine are injustices done to people. Yours may be injustices to animals and I am not saying that doesn't anger me, I am saying we each react to different things differently.

For example, it bothers me that politicians can break the laws, commit felonies and still keep their jobs, they can father children out of wedlock, falsify testimonies and get by with it. Yet, I know many young people who have made mistakes, gone to prison did their time & they can't get a job or decent housing. That angers me!

Politicians during our tough economic times that have no problem spending $650 on a dinner, flying on tax payers backs to exotic places and taking their families along while so many struggle just to put food on t heir table. That angers me!

People who feel if you are over the age of 40,45, 50, etc. and lost your job that you have nothing to offer an organization, that bothers me a lot. Who makes these decisions? Computer chosen resumes bother me because they are only choosing certain buzz words...or are they? I don't know, perhaps it is set up to discriminate against ones age. Rudeness angers me.

However, deliberately being rude to a child angers me more. I have taken my grands to purchase a Slurpee and they will stand back and wait their turn and wait their turn and wait their turn while adults purposely cut in front of them. I have also seen clerks excuse the adult and let them know the child was there first! Kudos for those clerks!

Seeing anyone berate a clerk in a store for something out of their control angers me. People who think they can control others just because they have more money angers me. Seeing children being treated by adults like they are stupid because they are a child, well that down right ticks me off.

So what do you do about it? What can I do about it? Many times I just ask God to bless the person that is being mean. Other times I will step up and say, 'excuse me, but this child was here first or why are you so upset with this clerk, it isn't her fault the prices are going up, she is hurting from this just as much as we all are.

I guess in the scheme of life, I am who God made me whether you like it or not and at times I don't like it when I am short with someone who didn't deserve it, when I am quick to draw a conclusion and it winds up being wrong, when I am tired and cranky and snap at someone I love.

The great thing about being me is I can apologize and do so quickly. It also a rarity that I raise my voice in anger. There is really no use for it unless you see someone in danger and need to get their attention NOW!

How about you? Anything you want to share with me about who you are? When you think about it, if we were all the same, life would be totally devoid of any happiness!