Snowing in Blogland

December is here!! Cue the Christmas music, white elephant parties, Little Debbie tree cakes, 70-degree weather…the usual. And a small but fantastic December treat is back again this year: wordpress snow. (Cute, right?)

(thanks, internet!)

Ah, the end of the year. The perfect time for free online personality assessments, no? (…just me?) Somebody posted a link to their Myers-Briggs profile on Facebook today, so I zipped on over to look at my own. (Not a surprise: still an ENFP. Nerded out about this in March 2011, if you’re dying to know more about M-B. Which, aren’t you?!)  This led me on a little google goose chase for other tests I haven’t taken before, and I found this test from the VIA Institute on Character.

It’s supposed to be similar to the Clifton Strengths Finder, which you may have seen floating around email signatures, if you have any student affairs professionals in your life. I’ve never taken that one, mainly because it’s not online for free. But I want to, mainly because one of the qualities is called “woo”… which stands for Winning Others Over: “You enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you.” I like that. I also just like saying “woo.”

This VIA test is a set of 200 or so questions. If you’re feeling introspective or bored, give it a try! I blasted through it in a few minutes. (One time I sat through a similar test with a much more analytical individual and found his “but what does that really mean?” second-guesses excruciating. So to each his own.) You end up with rankings for 24 Character Strengths. Not as much info to sift through as the Meyers-Briggs, but still interesting. Just for shiggles, here’s how mine shook out:

Top 5: (Yay! These are nice.)

Creativity
Humor
Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence
Love
Curiosity

Bottom 5: (Yeesh…these are accurate.)

Self-Regulation
Humility
Perseverance (as in: follow-through, focus)
Spirituality
Prudence

That’s the thing about the personality test business, you have to take the rough with the smooth, and face the reality that your flaws aren’t always as charming as you’d like to imagine…

But isn’t that the core of so many iconic holiday characters — Bad Guys or Good Guys (or, you know, like all of us: Both Guys)?

Scrooge. The Grinch. George Bailey. Dreamy Prime Minister Hugh Grant in Love Actually.

Those guys learn to embrace what’s good in themselves, (with a little help from the occasional angel or ghost), while recognizing what’s not-so-good and taking advantage of opportunities to change for the better. That’s why we’re filled with cheer at the end of the story. Because we want to make things right. Ask forgiveness. Fall in love. Hug ZuZu. Give away scandalously large hams.

It’s a new way to look at the holidays…one that tells me I’m getting old…in which I’m less excited about presents and more excited about the possibility for second chances. Because anything can happen. It’s snowing on my blog.

It takes a village.

Tell you what, everybody, sometimes the cure for what ails me is some quality time with good old Mom & Pop Jenkins*.

(*Not a thing I’ve ever called them. Ever.)

Tonight was no exception. We played all the hits: dinner at Little Tokyo (celebrating its post-fire rebirth with the pink-est walls I’ve ever seen), a quick jaunt to Wal-Mart (nothing says “Mom & Dad” like necessity-shopping!), followed by around-the-house beautification (this time: hanging up some long-neglected wall art).
Oh, and they got in a little face time with their “grandkitty.” So everybody wins.

Exhibit A.

The wall art in question is (without question) one of the coolest gifts I’ve ever received. My cousin Jennifer (check her blog. she is the cutest.) made me this print for Christmas, after I’d offered “some sort of art” as a gift idea. She’s a great designer, and I thought this might be a fun assignment for her creative-new-mom self (well…not all that new. Ean is 2 now!). But on Christmas Eve, as we gathered to open presents in our traditional take-turns style, I had no idea what I was in for when I reached for my conspicuously picture-frame-shaped package. The first thing I saw when I tore into the paper was my name in type: “- Sarah Jenkins”…and I automatically started to tear up a little. This is the first time I’d seen something I’ve written presented like this. (She took a line from this very blog and brought it to life.) It was such a good surprise. So thoughtful and so perfect. (Yay, Christmas!)

Exhibit B.

So back to today. We made quite the team…Mom, Dad, and me…as she held the step ladder, and he wielded the drill, while I balanced a dustpan below. (Drilling dust is the worst! Where my uptight homeowners at?!) “It takes a village…” I giggled at our awkward proximity, but I also felt quite cozy indeed. Now my print has found a home on the wall, next to my second-favorite be-walled possession: my postcard rack full of photos. (Not my original idea…thanks, O mag!)

Tomorrow marks two years since I officially signed the contract for my house and became A Homeowner. Two years later, here I am, still making this house into my home. In so many ways, I’m a very different person than I was then (March 15, 2010), and the house has become a very different house, too.

We’re starting to look more like ourselves every day.

E is for evolve

But first, a quick diversion:

As much as I like to fancy myself a progressive, bleeding-heart liberal, vegetarian-hippie-type-person, it’s true that few things make me happier than the first trip to the mall during Christmastime. It’s always a surprise, and my [apparently capitalist at its core] heart literally gets warm with Christmas cheer. I am a retail executive’s dream: single twentysomething with cash, and a healthy backlog of nostalgia, to spend.
In these early days of the season, when the crowds are smaller and I’m not yet sick of hearing “All I Want for Christmas is You,” I love it all: the twinkle lights and garlands, “Santa”, the nonstop soundtrack, the seasonally-themed packaging, the sheer volume of Bath & Body Works holiday scents (you guys! Hot Chocolate this year! CRANBERRY PEAR BELLINI!!).
I tried desperately but unsuccessfully to think of an “E” Xmas word to make this all tie together, and honest-to-god, I had a brief moment where I thought to myself, “yule?” Because “Y” is a sometimes-vowel, and to my brain sounds an awful lot like “E” in this word… (“euwelle?”…it works. No it doesn’t. I know.)

And scene.

So onward to the real point of this post:

E is for Evolve

I found this snippet thanks to @NewYorker on twitter today, and I love it. This weekend was the New York City Marathon (talk about a life goal, y’all. Someday!), so they went to the archives for this piece from 1977:

keep on going

TAKES: PAIN AND THE MARATHON

“Marathoning as a pursuit, according to the runners we talked with at the plaza, often starts out as jogging. Some joggers evolve into runners. “If you’re a jogger and someone jogs faster than you, he’s a runner,” Dr. William Esposito, a radiologist from Summit, New Jersey, told us as he warmed up for the race. And some runners evolve into marathoners. Charlie Hayward, the sales director or St. Martin’s Press … puts it this way: “Joggers get started because they hear it’s good for their heart and peace of mind. Then they get interested in maybe going a little faster, doing a certain number of miles a day, completing a certain course. When the course gets long enough, pain sets in, and the question is whether you’re going to believe in your pain and quit or keep on going. If you keep on going, you realize how subjective pain is—you learn that sometimes it’s telling you to watch out for your body but that at other times it’s just complaining. And then you learn how to deal with the complaints—you move your attention away from the pain and keep on running.”
—Anthony Hiss, “Twenty-six-Point-Two-Miles,” The Talk of the Town, November 7, 1977

I especially love the last bit (hence the bolding, obv) because it’s so, so true—of running, and of life, like most of the running lessons I’ve learned over the years. I always tell people, if they confront me with the excuse, “I don’t know how you do it…I just HATE running,” that I used to hate running, too. You just have to keep going at first until you get past that threshold, whatever it is for you, that’s telling you to stop. You have to believe that there’s something better on the other side of it, and before you know it, you’ll find that there IS.

You’ll evolve.

This December will be the first year since 2007 that I won’t be heading down to Memphis to run (or watch, ’09) the St. Jude Half Marathon. (My friends and original motivation to run in Memphis have moved to Denver. Of course, Colorado has marathons, too…) So this December I’ll be filled with nostalgia for Christmas, and also for running on Beale St., for my friends, and (yes, even as a vegetarian-hippie-type-person…) barbecue nachos.