Someone e-mailed me a few weeks back and guessed my Myers-Briggs personality type (find out yours by clicking the link). I'd taken a Myers-Briggs test before -- at my software company job, actually. They brought in a consultant to go through some workplace analysis. A few weeks later they did a layoff. I didn't make the connection that perhaps the personality test results were used to see who to keep, but when I mentioned it to someone else, they thought that was obvious. I really have no idea. But anyway, I'm pretty consistently on these tests an INFJ. The closest call on the four is the Introverted/Extroverted scale -- I'm relatively uncomfortable in large crowd / loud bar / mobbed cocktail party type things, but I do crave being around people and don't have a ton of tolerance for amusing myself for long periods of time without outside contact. I just prefer more low-key stuff to loud crowded stuff, and don't like being the center of attention, but do like being with other people. So I'm somewhere in the middle of the Introverted/Extroverted scale. But reasonably strong on the other three elements.

I share this (1) just to share, and out of curiosity if anyone who's reading wants to share, and (2) because I wanted to mention the introvert/extrovert stuff to lead up to a brief and anticlimactic anecdote. So I'm relatively shy, especially in new situations, so at these law firm lunches, I'm usually not very interesting, because I'm meeting these associates for the first time and if we don't hit on something I have something to say about, I don't know that I'm really able to get myself into a real compelling conversational mode. It's hard. But sometimes I find myself forcing words out -- knowing I need to say something, and so I say something. But sometimes, in trying to say something in response to whatever, I don't think about what exactly I'm saying. And it's not a terrible thing, because I have nothing bad to say. Usually when I go wrong it's that I'm trying to be marginally amusing, and I'm just failing miserably. Or I say something off the cuff that then gets taken slightly more seriously than I meant it. Like at lunch on Friday, with some associates, in response to something, I mentioned that I didn't think bar review courses sounded all that necessary, since all it is is a video of some guy talking, and why not just buy the books and study from them. And that didn't get a good reaction, and I just felt silly for saying it. Or mentioning I haven't taken Evidence, and aren't signed up for next year, and then discovering most people think Evidence is pretty important and I should take it. I have nothing against Evidence, I just would rather take other stuff. And when I said it, I just said it to say something, and not to make some big point about not thinking I need to learn evidence if I have to deal with evidence. This is all very inconsequential. But I gotta write something, right?