Chronicle of black_son_of_gray's failures

[Slevin]

FWIW, I don't actually hate the idea. IKEA sells the legs of their furniture, which are great deals if you like the look. A great way to make exactly the furniture you want for almost nothing (~$50-60 for 4 legs if you get the wood for free). No joinery required. Craigslist resale of maybe $100-200 when you don't want it any more. Maybe a lot more if it is finished nicely and/or an exotic or trendy slab.

a) I'm being secondhand called out here for owning slab furniture (though gotten for cheap-ish on craigslist, but I'm probably the guy paying the $100-200 resale).

b) for completeness: there are also slightly more premium legs being made by other companies for ikea hacking that are also reasonable prices. I don't know which ones offer the best value, so I'm just linking a random one here https://www.prettypegs.com/us/ . In the bay area or other VHCOL areas, these might have a higher premium (beautiful wood + premium legs implies premium pricing).

[black_son_of_gray]

@Slevin

Not calling out! I'm entertaining the idea myself for a coffee table at the moment. I actually know of a great place to get slabs locally (I can get awesome cutoffs for jewelry there), and my workshop isn't set up to do big stuff (i.e. no router sled, no track saw, etc.). Still just a thought, though.

Thanks for the link, I'll give it a peruse.

[Jin+Guice]

A few notes:

My father makes furniture and sells it out of his house. He doesn't know how to use the internet and is dedicated to being a grumpy bitch in all aspects of his life, which means he turns away a lot of people and turns off a lot of people. His advertising consists of one of the most terrible pamphlets I have ever seen, a few walking sticks in the store of a local artist space*, a few walking sticks in one local art store and a facebook profile with 4 friends that he paid to have made. He claims to break even despite buying way more wood than he uses (he has some sort of weird wood fetish, I dunno, maybe you people understand).

*The artist space is actually pretty cool and unique and I think he gets a lot of his business from this.

One time his brother in law, who my father seems to generally like, suggested that he could help dear old dad get a better street sign (his is somewhat painful to look at) and suggested he move the sign to an obviously better location. My dad told him "I don't need any of your fucking fancy sales advise." My uncle sells doors in a small town in Ohio.





I recently became obsessed with suits and learned about what the most basic quality indicators are between suits. Let me tell you this. No one knows dick about suits. A used high quality suit will sell on ebay and at a thrift store for less than some shitty brand name suit or a super shitty polyester suit that is an actual color (not navy blue or some shade of dark gray) or has a print or design on it.

Americans love to consume, but man do they lack taste. I do agree with some of what has been said about functionality, where the average suit user simply needs something to check the box of "suit."

I also think that in general, when this much information asymmetry exists, there is probably a way to leverage it, although it may not be obvious or suit your own purposes or desires.






Music is super oversaturated as well. There are a million dads in their garages trying to revitalize their dreams of being a musician. Many of them are objectively better players than me. But they aren't nearly as successful as me (and I'm barely successful). I've sort of been puzzled by this for years. Some of it is location and access. Some of it is just being cool enough for the other musicians and people with gigs to talk to you. Some of it is attitude. If I looked at the numbers of people who were trying to play the gigs I get basically by accident, I would give up immediately. Yet....

[Ego]

Shellac a slice of reclaimed wood, screw some off the rack metal legs on it, and call it a "zen table", and it sells by the dozen for $600. (I knew a finance type who bought that kind of stuff.) Meanwhile, a hand polished case made with handcut mitered dovetails that would take 40-60 hours to make would basically go unsold ... because it didn't look as "nice" as the box jointed case slathered in poly for five bucks less.

As a business, doing it over and over... not my cup of tea. But a downed tree + Alaska mill could easily earn someone a one-time payoff ~$10k with not all that much effort or skill.

I thought of BSOG's business and this comment when I read this article in the WSJ about the trend in mid-century brutalist chairs. It reminded me of the stool @theanimal is making in his woodworking class, though his stool appeared more refined that these. Please forgive the hijack. It seems like a real opportunity.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chairs-bru ... lead_story

AN UNFUSSY and downright brutish, midcentury vintage chair design has been muscling its way into even the most traditional of homes lately. Though no cozy La-Z-Boy, the seat is getting high marks for a wabi-sabi style that celebrates imperfections, thanks to exposed bolts, obvious joints, plain-Jane planks and unpolished wood. Some look like little more than two pieces of wood attached to legs, but keyhole details or sculpted backs can make them sweeter. Designers and dealers are calling the increasingly in-demand seats, which hail primarily from Scandinavia and Europe, brutalist. At online marketplace 1stDibs, searches for “brutalist chair” are up 115% year over year.

“These mid- to late-century chairs are raw, organic and almost harsh,” said Maureen Ursino, an interior designer in Colts Neck, N.J., who’s been buying them for clients because they add “a contemporary element in not too intense of a way.” Recently she placed a single Danish pinewood chair, likely a survivor of the 1970s, in the bathroom of a Larchmont, N.Y., home. “I used it as a decorative accent, as though it were a piece of art,” she said.

[black_son_of_gray]

@ego Not a hijack at all - I agree it is an opportunity.

One of the more surprising things I've learned about 'vintage' furniture is that tool marks aren't a bad thing at all, and are probably desirable (prove authenticity). The tradesmen making them were flying, and if it didn't show, or was only noticeable upon close inspection, they didn't spend time on it. So for example on the underside or inside of a piece, you can often/usually see hand plane tracks or rough saw marks. If you have an old dovetailed drawer, take a look at the joint from the inside corner - they almost always over-sawed past the line of the joint so that they would have less chisel work to do. Looks... not great, but saved time, and no one would notice. Case in point, I just spend 5 minutes image searching because I know that description can be a little hard to follow, and while I found a ton of images of the outside of dovetail drawers, I couldn't find any that showed the inside. No one looks there!

From a business standpoint, my suspicion is that some sub-segment of any given market (I won't speculate how large because I haven't a clue) really craves "authenticity","uniqueness","story" in a product, however you want to define that. Pretty much the opposite qualities of generic, mass manufactured stuff purchased at a big box store that itself looks like every other big box store. What's interesting to me is how those two forces manifest and hybridize in small-time individual makers of things. E.g. There's the fine furniture world where a subset of furniture-makers make older styles (e.g. a bespoke federalist highboy), but they do it with the insane attention to detail...that is, perfection, that modern consumers simply expect. Or you have the slab furniture-makers, who end up making a very modern looking table, with metal legs, maybe bright epoxy fills, but then have this charming, semi-chaotic and rough live edge on it. It's 90% perfectly polished, 10% wild, natural, one-of-a-kind.

I suppose the sweet-spot is dialing in, or stumbling upon, a product/service that can appeal to both segments*. Both polished and raw, natural yet reproducible. I say that because otherwise you'd have to try to distinguish yourself as being particularly unique (i.e. one of only few in the world with X) or particularly efficient (i.e. the absolute cheapest, fastest, etc.). That seems to me to be either 1)very hard, or 2) very grueling. Or, looking at it from the other side, have a business with a very large, persistent demand for X, although there is probably less self-expression there. I'm thinking the trades, etc.

*This could be very simple and straight-forward. E.g. simply having made it by hand (and the customer being convinced you did). That's pretty much Etsy's whole shtick. The products aren't necessarily better/that different, but the customer wants to buy from a particular human who made it themselves, and that makes all the difference. Or, @ego's description of selling the scarf of the Afghani girl... that adds story and uniqueness to an otherwise generic scarf.

Ok, I'll stop. I find this combination of running a business + consumer psychology fascinating, because so much of it boils down to "what do people find meaningful" and "how can I provide meaning to others". Working on both of those questions is about as ERE as it gets.

[jacob]

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi . But otherwise, leaving handtool marks is currently a sign of exclusivity simply because it's more expensive. When machining was not available, perfect precision was the goal and leaving marks was the sign of an amateur (e.g. "French-marks").

Add: Okay, either I misremember the term or it's ungooglable, but French-marks refer to hammer imprints in the wood next to a nail from not hitting it. The French probably called them English-marks.

[Ego]

From a business standpoint, my suspicion is that some sub-segment of any given market (I won't speculate how large because I haven't a clue) really craves "authenticity","uniqueness","story" in a product, however you want to define that.

This 100%. I have several friends who rent stalls in antique malls. They all tell stories. One actually writes little stories on cards and attaches them to the items. A rickety old table with gouges and stains gets a card saying, "This reminds me of the candlewax stained tables in that little beachfront cafe on Santorini where I drank ouzo for the first time and danced until three with the boy from.... "

There is art in taking a flaw and making it a feature.

[zbigi]

According to Weblen, this has already started in XIX century. People with means preferred cuttlery with some (unbvious) imperfections in them, which signified being made by a human, and thus being more expensive.

[black_son_of_gray]

The Impact of Small Emotions

I want this journal to catalogue my various attempts to do/learn things with a sub-goal of being honest about the stumbles along the way. Because having hiccups in a process, or screwing something up a little bit, or having to course-correct is, y'know learning, and kinda valuable to normalize and provide as an example for others.

So, here's something that I have come to understand about my life, how I think, and how it has shaped my development as a human. I share it because maybe it's relevant/helpful for you, dear reader.

Too long; won't read wall of text:
I have come to understand that teeny tiny little emotional "burps" happen in me all the time, and it has enormous impact on the decisions I make and the directions I go in. I suspect this is probably true for you as well.

Maybe a hypothetical example is the best way to start:
Let's say that I hear of an event at a local museum that is about the history of textiles in pre-industrial Korea. Within maybe a second of "history of textiles in pre-industrial Korea" entering my head, there is immediately a faint vibe of "Nah..." and I know from experience that I'm probably going to avoid/ignore that event. I assume, perhaps wrongly, many people have these kinds of reactions in all sorts of daily situations. I think it's worth unpacking.

It's emotional.
For context, if you were to survey everyone that knows me, I'm quite confident that exactly zero people would say I'm an emotional person. Probably a few would say I am as inert as a rock. But when people refer to "emotions"/"emotional people", I think the emphasis is almost entirely on what I might call "big emotions": The weeping at a funeral, the fist-pumping exhuberance following the overtime goal, the rage at being cut off in traffic. Now imagine those emotions at nano-scale, both in size and time, and I might call those "small emotions". They are fleeting, often gone before my consciousness can even recognize that they happened. They are tiny, almost imperceptible. It's like when you have a new dish of food, and you just can't figure out if there is a little whiff of a particular spice in it... just with emotions. And they are very, very frequent.

Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow, lays out System 1 and System 2 thinking (I won't rehash it here, because many already know it, but a decent enough summary is here), and while "emotional" is listed under System 1, I don't think he expounds on the emotional aspect of thinking all that much. But I'm a sucker for catagorization and I think that is very useful here. These small emotions, like System 1 thinking, are automatic...they just happen in response to stimuli. If I understand it correctly, certain traditions of Buddhism have really dived deep into this "stream of fleeting microemotions." Best explanation I've read was in Why Buddhism is True. I'm certainly not breaking new intellectual ground here.

A point I do want to emphasize, though, is how absurd these small emotions can be. In the context of my museum example:

• I like museums and I like going to them
• I know almost nothing about Korea (except that there are amazing hats in historical K-dramas)
• I certainly know nothing about pre-industrial Korea
• I know essential nothing about textiles
• I generally like to learn about things I know nothing about.
• I usually end up enjoying events where before-hand I didn't think I would like it.

These tiny knee-jerk reactions can in no way be considered logical.

Also, it took me being well into my 30's before I really understood that these small emotions were even happening, and that if I really paid attention I could detect them. It certainly takes some effort, attention, and being dialed-in to my emotional state. They really are that small/nuanced- at least for me. And learning all this didn't exactly come naturally. Perhaps that's more relevant to me than you, dear reader.

It hasn't been very useful in my life.
As just mentioned, I usually end up enjoying events where before-hand I didn't think I would like it. But the frustrating part is how inconsistent the outcomes are across a wide range of life events. Sometimes, my small emotions match my resulting experience, sometimes they don't. I can't really discern a noticeable pattern or predictability, with the following exceptions:

• physical, bodily danger
• creepy vibes from people. A deeply negative vibe when first meeting someone does seem predictive (not perfect, but pretty good!).

Thankfully, I don't encounter those situations very often. The vast majority of small emotions that play out in my head seem to be super tiny versions of "like/dislike", "good/bad", or "boring/interesting" about things I essentially know nothing/very little about directly. Probably what little I might know is hearsay. A or maybe the major problem here is that whether I like or dislike or find something interesting is directly related to the amount of exposure I've had to it. So it's like a switch that has two settings: positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. Furthermore, as with System 2 thinking, I'm pretty sure I better place these "like/dislike", "good/bad", or "boring/interesting" judgements if I bring them up into my mind and sit with them a while, really work through the range and nuance. But I don't, because if I small "like" something, I don't need further convincing (so I don't try), and if I small "dislike" something, it takes real effort to overcome the negative activation energy (sorry, chemistry reference) to give it a longer, fair appraisal.

It has been very impactful in my life.
After reflecting on it for a while, it's almost difficult to overstate how impactful these small emotions have been on the course of my life. All the people I did/did not say "hello" to for that first time, all the things said that were better left unsaid. Just about everything that has spent more than a couple seconds in my consciousness has probably been pre-assigned a small emotion which, even in a very subtle way, influences all subsequent thought. Maybe it could be argued that most thoughts are trivial, so a tiny influence on trivial thoughts should also be considered trivial. But then:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Dillard

It applies to big decisions, too. A lot of people have really good answers to "why did you/why didn't you..." questions about major life decisions. I have relatively few. "Why did you go to grad school?" Honest answer: I'm not really sure other than a tiny, vague feeling that I wanted to. I found the topic interesting. I now know that I find almost everything pretty interesting if I take the time to dive deep into it. But choosing to go to grad school resulted in me: moving to particular places (for a decade), meeting my SO, learning very specific and niche skills, not learning other very specific other niche skills in another place around other people, etc. Just as an example. The thing about life is that there is only so much of it and the clock is always ticking. Saying yes to one thing means saying no to others. Saying no to one thing means you have to say yes to another (even if that other thing is just twiddling your thumbs in the corner). Yadda yadda. All those cliches are true!

In the last 20 years of my adult life, I've somehow managed to get started in a handful of activities/topics that I initially didn't think were "good" or "interesting", only to discover quite the opposite. Slowly, I've started to change my approach to specifically include some frequency of fair shakes of things/events/possibilities where the initial small emotion wasn't positive. You could think of it as an attempt at "better sampling" to test the veracity of small emotions, particularly in contexts where I am completely ignorant. That is, I can assure you, a very large set of contexts. So far, so good. I want to see where this leads.

Dear reader, I'm interested in hearing about times in your life where you recognized and then intentionally ignored small emotions and just did the thing anyway, for better of worse. Particularly when the small emotion was something like, "this is brilliant/stupid", "this is boring/exciting", "that's wrong/bad/moral/good" for things that you really didn't initially know much about. Nothing is too mundane.

[jacob]

Okay, I'll offer this distinction then:

It's useful to differentiate between emotions and feelings. Emotions are microchemical bursts generated by our limbic system (dopamine, etc.) Feelings are the neocortical overlay that translates these emotions into behavior, experience, perception, and opinion. (Our interpretation of the experience of dopamine, etc.) There's but a handful of base emotions like happiness, fear, surprise ... but many complex feelings like jealousy, boredom, attraction, envy, ... and even complex constructs like principled morality (which can also be purely logical) and social behavior that takes other people's emotions into account.

Those feelings can be introverted and directed towards one's own emotions and/or extraverted and directed towards other people's emotions. (E.g. directing our own behavior to regulate our own emotions through morality (this behavior creates good feelings, that behavior creates bad feelings) and behave socially to induce same effect in other people's feelings.)

As such, feelings are basically a thinking system that is based on emotions (yours and others) just as logic is thinking system that is based on true xor
false. Bayesian inference (probabilities of truth) and vision-logic (intuitive latticework) are yet two more alternatives.

As for me, I did not realize that there were alternatives to classical logic in common human usage until I was 21. Today I've mostly abandoned that system as well. Unless explicitly informed, it's difficult to know one's own unknown [cognitive paradigms] even if they are known to others; because the same problem exists for others making communication impossible, because most only know the one system they're using and thus don't even think of it as a system at all. It's easy to conclude that people running on a different operating system are <insert the worst words about the other OSs according to your own OS> when they don't see the "obvious". E.g. stupid or insensitive.

I will say to this day I still ignore or rather override current feelings (my own or those of other people) whenever I have a logical, statistical or more overarching intuitive reason to do so; and I almost always have. I've never really had very high opinions of the "Monkey Mind O/S". However, I'm materially more aware of the existence and popularity of other OSs than I used to be though. Like I now know that some people are "feely" (not stupid) and others are rational (not cold or narrow-minded) and yet others are ... This makes it easier to live and let live when it comes to conflicts.

[ertyu]

BSoG, you might want to read Focusing by Eugene Gendlin. Old and widely available second hand/via library, but gold.

[Western Red Cedar]

Dear reader, I'm interested in hearing about times in your life where you recognized and then intentionally ignored small emotions and just did the thing anyway, for better of worse. Particularly when the small emotion was something like, "this is brilliant/stupid", "this is boring/exciting", "that's wrong/bad/moral/good" for things that you really didn't initially know much about. Nothing is too mundane.

Here is a story that brings it back full circle with your example of Korean textiles:

I had recently graduated college and was partially through a year working with Americorps. Adventure and novelty were high priorities for me after sitting in classrooms for 16 years. I was considering the Peace Corps, but the application process was quite rigorous and I wasn't thrilled about the idea that I couldn't choose my destination. I was sitting in the computer lab (can't remember exactly why I was on campus after having graduated) doing research on the Peace Corps, and saw a random advertisement for teaching English in South Korea.

I read about it and thought it sounded interesting. It ticked all the boxes for novelty, adventure, travel, and it paid better than many similar options - including free accommodation and airfare to and from the country. My initial response was something like - this is crazy, I can't uproot my life and move to another country where I don't speak the language or know anyone, and this all could be a scam.; and Asia seems scary . Even after talking with the recruiter and interviewing with the school, I thought I still might be getting scammed because it all felt so seamless.

I followed through with it based on another emotional or non-rational reason. I felt like the universe was giving me an indication to go. The decision changed the trajectory of my life. I went, had an amazing time and met a bunch of cool foreigners and Koreans. Traveled for a year, then returned with my girlfriend (now wife) to teach for another year.

The funny thing is I've had a similar feeling about the universe giving me signals recently. Rick Rubin talks about this in his new book on creativity.

I just applied for a new job yesterday, only the second time I've done this in 8.5 years, based on a similar feeling. It is hard to embrace this as someone who is typically very logical, but a lot of the most significant decisions I've made have relied at least as much on intuition as they have on logic.

[black_son_of_gray]

I will say to this day I still ignore or rather override current feelings (my own or those of other people) whenever I have a logical, statistical or more overarching intuitive reason to do so; and I almost always have. I've never really had very high opinions of the "Monkey Mind O/S".

So I'm curious then as to when/if you've ever indulged "Monkey Mind O/S", even though you didn't think it was a good idea, and found it worthwhile/enjoyable.

As a personal example, on paper there is exactly no way that I should like demolition derbies: I hate loud, crowded places, brazen spectacles where people needlessly injure themselves, extravagant waste of resources, and on and on... Somehow, I ended up going to one. It turns out, I loooove a good demolition derby. It's bizarre. All the raw enthusiasm and energy that I don't get at things like sporting events or concerts that most people get, I somehow get at a derby. No idea why.

Perhaps the more general question I'm getting at is something like:
1) subtle emotions play an outsized role in life decisions/interests
1.1) this could easily be extended to any other "thinking system" such as logic, etc.

2) Because one often doesn't really know what one wants/will enjoy/what will be "worth it"*, we are potentially missing out on huge opportunities for a better life (however you want to define that)
*2.1) Also because preferences change over the course of a lifetime, sometimes rapidly.

3) So, in the interest of "better sampling", it has started making sense to me to deliberately try things I don't think I want to try. Not all the time, and not necessarily for obviously hugely consequential decisions, but at least some times.

4) How best to do that, and what have people's experiences been if they've tried it?

In other words, how do you sample the space of unknowns for it's potential (huge!) benefits? It seems like any particular way of thinking, if too regular or dogmatic, is going to fall short, no?


@ertyu - thanks, I'll look it up.

I followed through with it based on another emotional or non-rational reason. I felt like the universe was giving me an indication to go. The decision changed the trajectory of my life.

I'd like to hear more about this feeling that the universe was telling you something if you're willing. In particular, how often would you say you feel it? And what does the evolution of that feeling look like? By evolution, I mean that you got the feeling before the decision, but how long did it last? Throughout the whole experience? Did it evaporate once the decision was made? In other words, what happened when you settled into a routine in Korea and stabilized a little bit? Still feel it then?

[ertyu]

While these "subtle" emotions aren't automatic super-wisdom that can correctly guide us always etcetera, they do provide a lot of useful information and knowledge of oneself and can be "gone into" in quite a lot of depth. Gendlin describes one approach of doing so.

His initial research was on the effectiveness of therapy: why do some people make rapid progress in therapy while others can be in therapy for years and never get anywhere? He recorded a bunch of therapy sessions and he figured out that people who made progress had a different way of being with their own stuff regardless of what a therapist did or didn't do.

While the initial findings were obtained in the context of therapy and with people who often had issues, they are applicable to anyone who wishes to pursue personal growth and development. Gendlin called the emotions you describe "felt sense" and termed the process of getting in touch with them and giving them space to reveal their full complexity "focusing." He himself had a twice daily focusing practice since he made the discovery, one "session" with himself and one with a focusing partner.

Developing the skill takes some time. The first time you feel a "bodily shift" (another Gendlin term that refers to the feeling of lightness and openness that results when one of these "pops"), you will see for yourself why the process is worthwhile. According to Daniel Ingram's classification in Mastering the core teachings of the buddha, what Gendlin stumbled on is a type of concentration meditation practice which has psychological and personal growth as a side effect. Thus I will not be surprised if it turns out that focusing also has the standard "package" of benefits one would expect from regular meditation: increased focus, stress reduction, etcetera.

[jacob]

@bsog - In the general sense, it's almost as if you're asking about "shadow play", which is exploring various aspects of one's shadow in order to become a more fully developed/balanced human?

The shadow is essentially the unconscious aspect of one's personality. I'm an MBTI guy, so for me the shadow is the least developed of the preferred stack functions. For an INTJ whose car model persona is (Ni-Te-Fi-Se) the shadow is (Ne-Ti-Fe-Si), which is the ENTP.

A Jungian would be talking about arch types instead, but I prefer diagrams rather than poetic metaphors Same general attitude though... whichever language makes more sense; I don't do poems

Insofar the shadow is repressed, then as traditional theory of psychology goes, the shadow will still be expressed but oftentimes in pathological ways. The absolutely most generic and trite way of doing so is projecting [the shadow] onto other people. (This is also why whataboutism is so appealing to immature humans. The "I'm rubber, you're glue ..."-taunt from the school yard as well as some of the worst politicians or political arguments.) A pathological INTJ would tend to project their own insecurity about their hyper-informed opinion onto others accusing everybody who doesn't agree with the INTJ of being stupid while doubling down on their core strengths: "Grrr must be more like cyborg. Demand scientific proof. Ayn Rand said ..." (BTW, I suspect this is why stoicism is so popular in STEM circles. It provides a philosophical validation to innate preferences and weaknesses... as far as the rationalist goes.)

However, I'm thinking you're looking for something more practical than this though, so back to MBTI... (I think this is more useful than talking base-function feelings because e.g. Fi and Fe takes very different forms for an INTJ compared to the form they would take for an ESFP, say.)

Instead of talking about emotions, I'd rather talk about cases where I chose to indulge in my ENTP shadow (think 7wb5's temperament) as opposed to going with my INTJ. In that regard, I could argue that the renaissance part of ERE actually does indulge the ENTP shadow's desire to "try many different inventions". Note though how the focus is on ENTP stuff usually takes the form of "lets build something crazy cool" rather than ESTP stuff, which might take the form of swallowing a tide pod for the challenge and ending up floating upside down in a pool after a most awesome beer pong party.

If you read through https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-extreme/ you'll note that I've tried a shitload of things. W/o being conceited I think I've done more in the first half of my life than most people do in 2-3 lifetimes. However, my actual persona (the INTJ) does exert some moderating pressure to "curb the enthusiasm". One could say I don't do anything "spontaneously" because I always consider the bigger picture: "The ENTP-inspired fun stuff must stay within the INTJ big-picture" ... even if the excuses are sometimes contrived: "Alright shadow, go ahead with whatever you do, as long as you don't fuck up the strategy."

Also note that there are things that I have not done such as square dancing, hanging out in bars, cosplaying at Comic Con, singing, doing improv theater,... These are examples of things that I really don't want to try. Well, why not? Because these all indulge in the Fe-aspect and all my previous experiences with Fe-oriented activities has been a combination of "I know I'm going to dislike this immensely"+"I need to do this out due to social conventions, so I'll do it"+"Yeah, so I'm doing it and it really does suck/I simply don't understand(*) why humans enjoy this so much". Examples include small talk, going to weddings, fussing over babies, hugging, cheering,...

(*) I recognize it as a data point. Wissen that it is an actual thing. However, kennen doesn't happen.

In conclusion, I use my INTJ functions (NiTeFiSe) to sample deliberately within my ENTP shadow (NeTiFeSi). Whenever I've tried to sample within the shadow of my shadow (the 7th function or the so-called trickster function, here Fe), it has always been disappointing in terms of the basic emotions it elicits. I will allow that maybe there's a next stage. Maybe ask me again in 10-20 years.

[7Wannabe5]

Yup, I agree with Jacob. That's why my handle is 7Wannabe5. My direction of growth is towards NiTe, although lately I've been in serious decline to lower functioning due to various stressors. In fact, vis-a-vis the Renaissance Soul aspect of ERE, I sometimes think that most of the INTJs on this forum don't really grok what it is like to be a true generalist, because you lack first urge to go side-ways towards new-to-me rather than upwards towards mastery*.

Anyways, I have done some conscious experimentation with activities that seem like "Green Eggs and Ham" to me, but many other people seem to find fulfilling or enjoyable, such as joining an organized religion (Fi)or playing sports (Se), and I pretty much sucked at maintaining my interest.

*And I also know that I don't fully grok desire for achieving mastery as first urge like you guys. Jumping from Geology 101 to Psychology 101 to Art Appreciation 101 to British Lit 101 appeals more than moving on to Geology 201, 301, 401, 501...even though I comprehend that newest stuff of all might only be found at cutting edge of expertise.

[Western Red Cedar]

I'd like to hear more about this feeling that the universe was telling you something if you're willing. In particular, how often would you say you feel it? And what does the evolution of that feeling look like? By evolution, I mean that you got the feeling before the decision, but how long did it last? Throughout the whole experience? Did it evaporate once the decision was made? In other words, what happened when you settled into a routine in Korea and stabilized a little bit? Still feel it then?

It is a phenomenon that underlies some of the biggest decisions in my life. My typical approach to decision-making relies on collecting data, assessing alternatives, and selecting one that fits best with my goals (or WOG in ERE parlance). Occasionally I encounter an opportunity, option or circumstance - usually something that isn't even on my radar - and it just feels like something is telling me this is the path I should take. Sometimes it happens when I'm pondering a big decision for multiple months, and sometimes it hits me out of nowhere in regards to something I wasn't even considering. The experience usually just lasts for a few minutes, but it may resonate internally for days or weeks. Sometimes I start second guessing that option when I start to weigh the pros and cons, but for many major decisions in my life I've listened to it and followed through. It is basically something internal that loudly shouts "WRC - you should do this!"

This is probably what people talk about when they mention a gut-feeling, or following their intuition. It is just fairly foreign to me to make decisions in that capacity. It seems like I'm primed to follow that feeling when other factors are influencing me - usually something in the arts such as books, music, poetry, films, etc.

[zbigi]

Yup, I agree with Jacob. That's why my handle is 7Wannabe5.

Honestly, for a while I thought this was somehow related to dress sizes

[7Wannabe5]

@zbigi:

I wish. I'm 5'9" and big-boned, so even when I was hanging out with the kind of women who take diet pills with vodka for lunch I never got below size 8 as an adult. Of course, if I was a Enneagram Type 5, much more likely I'd have my dress size under firm rational control too, instead of yo-yo-ing up and down over the decades. I'm actually the chubbiest I have ever been at this juncture, but my motivation is limited due to too many old guys who still want to date me, and the fact that the U.S. sizing chart has been adjusted upwards at least twice since 1978.