Hillary and I have personalities that are complementary, or contrasting, depending on the context. Sometimes we laugh at the disparities. Sometimes we’re at war.
As a small business operator, my singular mode is “force of will.” If I can influence something or make it happen, I have to try—often resulting in exhaustion, sleepless nights, and a low-grade stress that has me checking spreadsheets, emails, and bank accounts at 4am for no practical purpose.
I know that sounds unhealthy. But anything else feels like neglect.
On the contrary, and often to my chagrin, Hillary has a consistent “not my problem” mode. It’s as if she’s in a perpetual state of “let’s just see how it plays out.”
It’s easy to misjudge personality types. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Strong and weak. And that’s because context determines the effectiveness of a personality far more than any innate attribute.
During times of growth, opportunity, and excitement, my personality seems highly effective. And maybe it is! But I suspect that just as often, I get false positives. I get evidence that I’m being effective because anyone working hard in that context would find some positive results. It’s easy to collect the evidence you’re looking for.
Right now, however, I’m a sprinter trying to run a marathon. And holy shit am I winded.
The last few weeks have recontextualized many of my strengths as liabilities. Without the possibility of a positive feedback loop coming for at least a few months, my typical, fast-track approach to problem solving and prototyping isn’t going to be supported by recognizable evidence. No one even knows what success looks like right now. And it’s never good to be unsure of both the what and the how.
So as a person who’s used to talking themselves up to meet a challenge, I’m currently having to talk myself down. Way down.
Meanwhile, Hillary has barely shifted gears at all. Her attitude toward most of life seems ideally suited to unknown outcomes, and a context that overwhelms any individual’s potential effect on the outcome. It’s out of anyone’s hands.
She has this joke she recites often, whenever she doesn’t feel like following through on something, or doesn’t think something matters much. She says, “That seems like a problem for future Hillary.”
Sometimes I chuckle at this. Sometimes I lose my mind.
But here we are: me running into wall after wall trying to translate a global pandemic down to the needs of our business, our employees, our clients, and finding very little opportunities for success that look any different than anyone else’s. My determination and specific skills probably aren’t going to change the average result.
And I look on with envy as she thinks about what we’re having for lunch. Or as she makes a compelling game for the kids. Or as she calls her mom and has a chat about their day. She reads. She can sit there and fucking read.
What so often looks like indifference or passiveness now looks like invincibility to me. The new context has made what I perceive to be her weaknesses into unimaginable, even enviable strength.
Tonight, she holed up in the guest room next to the flickering router watching reality TV, drinking a Pilsner, and running fabric she inherited from her grandmother through a sewing machine I’ve never seen her use once.
Her grandmother lived through World Wars. Vietnam. The Depression. These are now going to be masks that me and my kids wear.
Eight years ago, I remember asking her what she was going to do with all this fabric. I remember using a slightly mocking tone and calling her a packrat. In that context, I had the privilege of being right. But that didn’t make me interesting.
“I don’t know,” she said at the time. “We’ll see.”
Some of the patterns are surprisingly modern.
Words + Photoby Michael Kiser