Topix Questions 1 "Planner or Spontaneous" & 2 "Judge of Character" of 424

 

In March 2021 I purchased this Conversation Starter card set with the intention of going through them with my boyfriend.  That hasn't happened.  Instead this colorful box of cards has been used as a phone stand at work until I decided to use them as prompts for this blog.  I'm unsure if I'll be posting monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly, but I do want to try and get through all 424 questions, possibly two at a time since that's how the cards are set up.  If anyone feels inspired by this, by all means follow along or even buy your own copy of this deck and see if you can use it in real life during in person conversations also!

Question 1/424:  Are you a planner, or prefer to be spontaneous?

If forced to answer this without explanation, I would say I am a planner.  However, context is everything.

I am not a person who could just up and decide one day that I was going to travel out of state for the weekend.  I at least need time to pack a bag, plan some road trip snacks, and make sure I have enough money to fund gas and emergency expenses.  However, if given too much time to plan, I am guilty of essentially talking myself out of things because of the stress that goes into planning and thinking about every possible outcome of something.  If the person inviting me along has taken care of all of the forward thinking and has planned out those things, and mostly just wants a companion along for the ride, then in that scenario I could be on board for a more spontaneous outing.

If we’re not talking about travel, I also am not one to just decide to get a tattoo in the morning and have it done by the afternoon.  On the other hand, if I am having a quiet weekend without much going on and a friend randomly messages me to go out to dinner or dancing or even to a concert, I would probably say yes just because I’d rather be doing something than nothing most of the time.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect and admire people who can do the things I stated above that I can’t.  I often wish that I was a more spontaneous person, or at least a less worrisome person.  Even if I decide to partake in a spontaneous, or semi-spontaneous, adventure or activity, once the initial adrenaline of the “Yes!” wears off, I am the most likely person in a group to start worrying about:  Did we forget something?  Do we have a back up plan if something goes wrong?  Am I being irresponsible?  Am I being selfish?  Am I being wasteful?  Do we have a schedule?  In some ways, my friends appreciate this side of me because it means I am usually thinking about the things everyone else in the group isn’t.  But sometimes this way of thinking also makes me the unpopular one because I’m not just living in and enjoying the moment.  I accept that is true, and I can totally understand why people would feel that way about it, but it’s how I was raised.  Besides, any time I have done something spontaneous (or that I at least consider to be spontaneous) it has usually backfired on me.

Overall, as I stated in the beginning, I am a planner.  I feel better having a plan, and a back up plan, and maybe even a third back up plan.  I am working on challenging myself to be more spontaneous, at least in the contexts that I feel safe enough to do so.

 

Question 2/424:  Are you a good judge of character?

I’d like to answer this question with a resounding “Yes!”.  I’d like to believe that all of my years of long-running friendships, short-lived friendships, and romantic relationships that I’d be able to confidently say that yes, I am a good judge of character, thank you very much.  However, I feel like if I had to give myself a score, I’d say my judgement of character is only about 70% accurate.  I am a person that gets gut feelings about people upon first meeting, and I am also a person who puts a lot of weight on first impressions.  All of that being said, I have been very wrong about people, in both senses of the phrase.  I have thought people were wonderful humans, only to learn they were manipulative and toxic, and I have assumed the worst of people only to learn that they are genuinely good people and I misread them terribly.

Ever since my last relationship ended in 2018 though I do feel pretty skilled at being able to pick up on narcissistic tendencies, and I have no shame in calling them out, though I do try to do so in a polite way.  I am also at a point in my life where I simply don’t have the time to put up with behavior that I deem as disrespectful or toxic.  I recognize that no one is perfect, and that everyone has a tendency to fall into bad habit from time to time, but I do believe that if you’ve met a person at least three times, and their behavior or personality remain pretty much the same, that’s a pretty good indication of who that person is.  I have also grown up and moved on from the “I can fix them” mentality, because not only is it unhealthy it’s also simply untrue.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned about interpersonal relationships, it’s that people will not change until they want to change.  Maybe, if you’re lucky, you can be their inspiration, or can show them a new way to be that they never considered before, but generally speaking, by the time a person is 25 or so they are pretty much the person they’re going to be until they have seen the light and have decided to make changes.

I also believe you can learn a lot about a person based on a two things. One, the type of friends they have.  If you’re hanging out with someone and their friends, and you really don’t like their friends, and you’re wondering why this person who you think highly of would surround themselves with friends like that, it’s a pretty good indication that the person you’re with is probably not showing you their entire or true self.  Two, how they treat animals.  I’m not saying that only good people like animals, plenty of good people just don’t want to deal with the responsibility of pet ownership and that is totally understandable and acceptable, but if a person is just mean for no reason or has no respect for an animal that cannot defend itself or speak up for itself I think that’s a pretty good indication of how they’ll treat you if they ever find you to be annoying or too much in a situation.

At the end of the day, I think a lot about character stems from respect.  Pay attention to who and what a person respects, and how they express that respect, and you can probably make a pretty okay judgement call on who they are as a person overall.  If a person can’t speak with kindness or patience when a situation calls for it, if they constantly need to talk down to or about other people, if they feel the need to always be one-upping or showing off, that says a lot about a person’s character.