Can I Get Your Number? Trading in Engagement for Enneagrams
“Woah.”
I sat at the tiny two-person table in early June in a friend’s nearly-windowless Brooklyn apartment, sulking after being let go from my job. In a semi-panic stricken decision, I immediately booked a train to the city to say goodbye to my co-workers on my own terms, and start soul searching for the next career adventure. What I didn’t know is that my soul searching was going to go so much deeper than simply shooting for my next dream job.
In front of me was a book all about Enneagrams―radically simplified, it’s an in-depth dissection of personality types, but taps down deep into something almost primal. We contain all types, act differently when we are healthy or unhealthy, and we are constantly in movement with a home base.
Reading my initial results I was floored, thinking internally just “woah,” stunned how reading a few paragraphs and picking two had tapped into my very core, knowing some of my greatest strengths and crucial shortcomings.
I tried to play it off cool, knowing my next move as they left to go to work would be to binge-read the chapters relevant to my number and one-click order the book on Amazon so it was at my front door by the time I got home.
Once I got back, I settled in to devour the wisdom hidden in the pages but felt myself procrastinating, and getting distracted by our good friend social media. Myself and other co-workers have been let go or left our jobs, so focusing on the next career move was a very real full-time job. But I felt a very real sinking feeling each time one of my cohorts found a new, better job, or my now former co-workers continued on with awesome adventures.
On Twitter, I make it a point to follow those in positions I’d love to have, or institutions I’d love to work for, and passion projects. Any self-help expert will tell you to clear the junk out of your feed and curate only what you want your life to look like. However, I don’t always buy into the advice of filling your feed with inspirational people and accounts that are #goals, because it’s easy to get stuck in a FOMO trap, and forget that would you see on your feed is heavily curated.
It’s also worth noting that I’d been attempting to dive into the book during an annual time that I’ve branded as my own personal seasonal depression, the months between Mother’s Day and the anniversary of my Mom’s death. This compounded with unemployment FOMO, I knew I needed to unplug, and do a hard reset.
For a former Social Media Manager, yeah―it’s been tough to do a digital detox of my favorite platform, Twitter. I logged out, deleted the app from my phone and openly welcomed the fear of missing out. After that initial worry wore off, it felt freeing, almost like I forgot all about the constant conversation I could log-into. At my last position focusing on our online engagement left me perpetually logged on, compounded further by working for a remote company―we were “on” all the time.
With a clear head, I’m digging my digital detox and enjoying trading in engagement for enneagrams. Instead of getting too bogged down in the depressive fog, I took on the challenge of turning inward as a time of reflection, introspection, and to work on my own passion project. Using this time to learn more about this new way of thinking, and maybe even a little bit about myself in the process.
Oh―and if you’re wondering, I’m a six. What’s your number?
__
This post first appeared on jskennedy.net on 9/23/2018
