new year blues & belonging

postcard 1: belongingness, personality tests, and christopher nolan

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

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Before Sunrise (1995)

prelude

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

—Lucille Clifton

I am a big fan of personality tests. For someone who believes that no test with a standardized set of questions can accurately decide someone’s personality, I have probably tried every single (reputable) one under the horizon.

Actually—maybe not even reputable. When I was in my early teens, I would take every Buzzfeed and Quotev quiz I could find, including what Gossip Girl character are you? or during my Directioner phase, which One Direction member do you belong with? Most of these were ridiculous premises, but I found it so much fun being placed in a group with other people.

In more recent years, I have taken the MBTI test and the Enneagram test. I sometimes will spend a good hour in my free time poring over my results, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of whatever result I get. I compare it with my personality. Am I a control freak? Am I overly ambitious? Am I hyperindependent? I wonder what it means when someone I barely know tells me oh Elle, you’re such a Scorpio moon, that makes so much sense! By putting myself into these types and groups, what am I saying about myself?

That thought subsequently got me wondering: why do we do these tests? And do we (I’m overgeneralizing and saying I as a collective here) really believe in the results? Not just that, but do we really think that what we put in, what we perceive our personalities to be, is accurate?

While I do think that personality tests are a good baseline way to find out how you function as a person and analyze your qualities, I think the more inherent reason why we take these tests is our innate need to belong. We crave this validation of our qualities and being placed with similar people lets us feel that we’re not weird for doing x or that other people feel y as well.

I personally find MBTI so fun and interesting, even though its validity is murky at best. When I was writing books regularly, I had a big spreadsheet where I wrote out which character was which MBTI. Even for fictional characters, doing so made it easier for me to be able to create a fuller picture of their personalities. Assigning them a personality type that so many people and fictional characters already have gives them a form of depth and belonging that wasn’t previously there before.

I think this intrinsic yearning to be a part of a group of similar people is the reason why I started a bookstagram to begin with—after I graduated, I wanted the same atmosphere as what my English Literature courses provided me. I still loved reading and talking about books but I didn’t really have anyone to talk about it with. For the first time in my life, I had lost my identity as a student—specifically a literature student. This was, not to be overly dramatic, but devastating to me in the first few months, as I had prioritized being a reader and a student for the vast majority of my life. I finally created an account and the rest is history.

Little Women (2019)

Now, not only do I have thousands of people who are lovely enough to share their thoughts with me, but I also have so many close friends who read and love the same books. I find this incredibly comforting and am grateful that reading is no longer a lonely activity.

Circling back from my very long tangent: I am still not sure if personality tests are a reliable measure because the way I view myself is definitely biased (is there anyone who can give an unbiased rundown of anyone?) and perhaps other people view me differently. But it definitely makes self-reflection and self-awareness a bit easier to practice. And it allows one to feel a sense of belongingness, especially in the adult world where everything is a bit lonelier and a bit more isolating.

interlude i: what i read this week

I’ve been intensely busy this week so I didn’t get much reading done. I finished reading the advanced copy of Funny Story by Emily Henry. Unfortunately, I didn’t love it. Neither Miles nor Daphne felt relatable to me, which made it a less enjoyable read than her other books. My current Emily Henry rom com ranking is: Book Lovers (5 stars), Happy Place (5 stars), Beach Read (4.5 stars), Funny Story (3 stars), and People We Meet On Vacation (2.5 stars). But it still had her signature wit and banter and some pretty good (albeit rushed) chemistry. A fun read to start the year!

I reread These Precious Days by Ann Patchett for the book club I have going with my darling best girl Emma. One niche genre I have a soft spot for is nonfiction memoir essays that are semi-self-help books but not in an obvious way. in the way that it lets the readers read between the lines and figure out life lessons. These Precious Days hits that exact spot, and it is such a gem of a book. It made me think of the people and things that I love, and how the only correct way to love is wholeheartedly and unapologetically.

Currently, I am reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarozuk, which Malissa very kindly gifted to me for Christmas. Every single person whose book taste I trust has rated this five stars, so this is one of those ‘if I rate it less than 5 stars, I’ll quit reading’ books. Stay tuned for next week’s roundup for the review.

Moving onto articles, here are the ten articles I read and loved this week:

1. Is this the worst time ever to be in your twenties? by Mayanne Soret

2. The Family That Built an Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

3. Is Falling Asleep to TV Really So Bad? An Investigation by Rachel Handler

4. The World-Changing Trees of Vincent van Gogh by Jackson Arn

5. These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

6. The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest by Kathryn Schulz

7. The Vibes Are Off During the First Week of the Year by Isle McElroy

8. An Icelandic Town Goes All Out to Save Baby Puffins by Cheryl Katz

9. Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death by Alexander T Englert

10. How Many of Your Memories Are Fake? by Erika Hayasaki

interlude ii: what i watched this week

The movie theater near me has been playing old Christopher Nolan movies, so naturally, I’ve been going to all of them. I rewatched Interstellar in November, Inception in early December, and I just went to go see Dunkirk in IMAX last Saturday. It was an experience, since the first time I watched it was my friend’s iPhone 8 screen in 2017 in which our main motivating factor for watching it was to see the scenes Harry Styles was (our entire dialogue was as follows: there’s Harry. Oh look, there’s Harry again. Wow wait, Harry is kind of a dick in this movie). This time was a completely different experience, but I liked the movie much less than I expected. Interstellar, Inception, and Oppenheimer still remain the top three Christopher Nolan films for me.

I also watched half of this four hour long documentary on the Stuart Dynasty, this video on Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, and this video on a crater in Madagascar.

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postlude

The Lovers II by René Magritte (1928)

things i love right now: cooking new recipes, my rené magritte throw pillow, memoirs, tea instead of coffee, quiet vlogs on youtube, my current skincare routine, the dior backstage face palette in 001, penguin english library books, this playlist.

love,

elle