Take this personality test … for science

Why do we love putting ourselves into boxes?

I love personality tests.

A friend recently shared this one from the Open-Source Psychometrics Project; it’s a (slightly) more scientific personality test that matches you to characters in pop culture with percentages instead of giving you one answer à la Buzzfeed. From this test, I learned that I am an Eliza Hamilton, a Hermione, a Beth Pearson, a Jane Villanueva, a Willow Rosenberg, and a Belle. (Let’s be real: All of these check out.)

I think we love personality tests and labels because they offer a clear answer when modern life is full of ambiguity and choices. Boxes and divisions can be confining, but they can also feel safe. We want clear labels, and we crave before and after transformations – remember only a few weeks ago when everyone was vowing that “2021 will be different”?

Those big transformative moments can happen. I’ve been writing a series for this newsletter about those full-stop moments when you know something in your life must change. I do believe in lightbulb moments, and a huge part of why I write this newsletter is because I know finding the right approach to creativity and/or the exact story you need at a certain time can be life-changing.

A practical, concrete example is when I read Gretchen Rubin’s The Four Tendencies and took the personality test that goes with her framework. Discovering this approach was a lightbulb moment because I immediately better understood both what motivates me to get something done and why I can sometimes get stuck in a routine. (I’m an Upholder, if that’s not extremely obvious.)

A more poetic but still concrete example is when I re-watched most of Parks and Recreation last year and knew I was ready to fall in love again. How are those two things connected? Very simply, I watched April fall for Andy, and I said to myself, “I want that.” There were countless other factors going into my lightbulb moment, but the right story illuminated something I hadn’t been able to tell myself for a very long time.

But of course, people are far more complex than a “Which Sex and the City character are you?” quiz or one personality framework can show. This newsletter is partly my journey of seeking the fixes – the right story, the right phrasing, the right approach that clicks with you or with me, illuminating and maybe even transforming a life. I want to give you the easy solve, the neat answer, the clear before and after. I want what worked for me to be a blueprint that I can hand to someone else. But what I’ve come to realize, over and over, is that my lightbulb moments are not necessarily going to be someone else’s lightbulb moments.

My hope is that by describing what worked for me, I can give someone else trying to foster everyday creativity and/or work on self-care a piece or two that fits into their unique puzzle. I seek out other people’s stories for the same reason.

I’ve declared 2021 a “year of memoir” when it comes to my reading lists, and while I love this genre because it takes me out of my own lived experience and into someone else’s, I’m also finding that the other side of the coin is the overlap, the spots where I can relate to someone whose life is ostensibly very different from mine.

“I am aware that this is not the way anything is supposed to work,” R. Eric Thomas writes in Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, a memoir told in essays. In the opening essay, Thomas is talking specifically about his new job as an Elle.com writer and being paid to be funny online after a viral Facebook post, but he could also be writing about almost anything in the online world that we’re all more or less a part of.

“My goal is not to add trash to the fire,” Thomas says. I put a Post-It on that page because – even though I have absolutely failed in this regard, probably many times – that is my main goal when I’m online too.

I found similar little moments of common ground throughout Here for It, a funny and lyrical memoir-in-essays that takes hilarious, quotable, true-to-life scenes from the author’s life and ties them to universal and beautiful and hard things about the human experience. Thomas is a writer; he struggles with being Online, with reconciling his Christian faith and life as a gay man; he remembers the sacrifices his parents made for him and tries to live up to them while also trying not to be crushed by the pressure of it all. He doesn’t feel black enough or Christian enough while also being too much of both of those things. He documents millennial lostness and the frenetic nature of internet culture and the existential dread of life in general and post-2016 specifically.

“I think it’s important to revel in the small things that make us joyful, to indulge when possible and not problematic, to steal laughter and hoard it,” he writes. And isn’t that what we’re all striving for in life, no matter what other differences we have?

I’m also a writer. I struggle with the modern balance of embracing the possibilities that being online gives us while not letting it overwhelm me. I’ve had my moments of doubt and drift when it comes to my faith. As someone who is biracial, I’ve often felt that I wasn’t enough of either thing to “count,” and sometimes I wonder where that leaves me in our society’s racial divides. I’ve had my millennial lost years and come out on the other side of them a little broken but a lot more empathetic. My life experiences have been very different from those beautifully detailed in Here for It and yet … I had so many moments of “Oh, I think I’ve been there too?” while reading.

This is what draws me back to memoir: being taken out of my own life for a while and appreciating a new perspective, only to find at the same time that there are so many places where human experiences overlap.  

People can’t be contained in boxes. Our lightbulb moments will not be the same, but our differences also aren’t nearly as glaring as we sometimes think they are. Sometimes I wish life were as clear as the answer to an online personality quiz, but we would lose so much complexity and richness if we only defined ourselves by easy labels.

That being said, I just took a Buzzfeed quiz, and the confirmation is in: I’m definitely a Charlotte.

*Author’s Note about Goodreads links to books: I persist in linking as infrequently as possible because I assume that anyone who can sign up for a newsletter can also search and bookmark my recommendations in the way they think is best. But while I’m torn over its ownership, the fact remains that Goodreads is a free, accessible, helpful tool that has revolutionized my reading life. I'll let you make the decision from there where to buy your books, but I do recommend my lovely local bookstore, Quail Ridge Books (yes, they ship! and their customer service is great).