Work is becoming unbearable these days... I have to say I'm left reeling, in a way, courtesy of the fact that as soon as I handed in my notice, everyone seemed to suddenly experience some sort of personality transplant. I literally can't go anywhere without one of my colleagues cheerfully wanting to 'go with me'. I get up for a cigarette break - my only chance to get away for five minutes and actually stretch my legs - and someone will go: "Oh, can I come with you?". I keep a dead face about me,  but then crack a painful smile and say: "Sure..."

But it's also my own doing, and this is fascinating to me. See, shortly before I made the clear-cut decision to leave, I felt this intense wave of liberation, and with it came a loosening up of my own person. Suddenly I didn't care so much, and I wasn't so distant or afraid to chat people up randomly. And as soon as I started doing that, that's exactly when people started to be friendly towards me. It just happened to coincide with my decision to leave, and it leaves me in the most awkward position... though I have - again - learned an important lesson about myself.

Are we doomed to only be ourselves when we have or feel like we have nothing left to lose?

According to a few tests online, I'm the INTP type, meaning an Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving type. In other words, I'm the analytical type. This could have been written to describe me:

INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.

Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, this fine discrimination ability gives INTPs so inclined a natural advantage as, for example, grammarians and linguists.

INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to almost anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one's conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition. In this way INTPs are markedly different from INTJs, who are much more confident in their competence and willing to act on their convictions. ( Source: http://typelogic.com/intp.html)

The last part is the story of my life - literally. People constantly tout opinions to all and sundry, and I always have a hard time expressing any exactly because every time I do get an opinion forming inside my head it is almost instantly neutralised by my mind coming up with a flurry of other arguments that are actually just as valid. The consequence of this is that I have a deep-rooted sense that pretty much everything, except perhaps equations, bears no black and white answer...

I am not sure why, but the older I get the more attracted to numbers I find myself, which is ironic considering the trauma I went through at school when it comes to mathematics. But I said it before: "A leopard can't change its spots." And then let's not forget that I do have theories swimming within the darkest recesses of my mind which I know can only be expressed with numbers - equations - and which I am simply not able to produce yet.

In the end, I can only conclude that everything in Life always comes back full circle. One way or another.