Category: Miscellaneous (Page 1 of 2)

10 Years

April 6, 2023 / Calise Sellers

Hi, I’m Calise, and after 10 years, I still love people.

For as wordy as I am, I feel ill-equipped to articulate this. A “boring” decade would be hard for anyone to articulate in full, and the last ten definitely have not been that. I don’t really want to say “the journey we started ten years ago today,” because it didn’t really start then. Deciding “Hey, what if I MBTI typed people better than the internet, and had fun writing about it” was already five years into our marriage, which had been way too eventful already by April 2013.

Calise and Justin, Summer 2012

I know it probably seems silly and dramatic to the outside observer, treating what might look on the surface like just another “personality blog” like such a big deal. Especially when we have no letters certifying expert training, we’ve always been abominably bad at posting consistently, making promises of posts we haven’t fulfilled in a decade, and our web developer and videography skills have always been laughably amateur. We don’t advertise, we are hideous about replying to messages and emails.

And we haven’t posted a full post on this site since… I don’t even remember and can’t be bothered to go check. Was it 2018, with INTJ – The Dragon, Stranger Things and the Subtypes post? Probably. (Edit: Apparently The Dragon was 2017 and Stranger Things and Subtypes were 2018. Shows how much I remember, rofl.) And then it’s just been a bunch of dramatic posts about checking out our other content, elsewhere.

We are kinda dramatic. Going to get that out of the way right now. But we’ve gotten so many reactions of people scratching their heads at this little amateurish website getting the reactions it does.

People have said this doofy little website (along with the others connected to it) has changed their lives?? They’ve overcome huge amounts of depression, anxiety, family abuse, and self-deprecation through the tools we’ve provided? But not only have those internal circumstances been changed, but people have changed jobs, made and visited friends on the other side of the globe, and even moved across the country, and gotten married (or divorced, to my ongoing feels), as a result of relationships, with others and themselves, found through aLBoP.

I’m definitely not going to pretend it’s been all roses, no thorns. We’ve seen a lot of falling outs amongst our ranks, in friendships, marriages, siblings, one prison sentence, and Justin and I have been called many unsavory things over a decade and more. There are so many things we’d do differently, if we got another shot at it, although usually not the things people accuse us of doing badly. The last thing I want to do is paint us over-pretty.

But outside people are always shocked at the impact, whether you think it’s a bad or good impact, that a website and its offshoots can create in people’s lives. It’s a badly-organized, tangenting mess of bad grammar, too many hyperlinks, a lot of crossdressing references, which could be seen to take itself way too seriously and promises way past its station. And dramatic, so dramatic!! How the crap are people reacting this affected by it?

Well, I simultaneously am and am not just as shocked as they are. Nobody knows better than I do what a silly, dramatic mess I am. And I both did and didn’t intend for it to be a big thing. I felt really good starting it, and Justin and I had already been trying (and mostly failing) to help people with the tools we’d gleaned.

What is Smart? – going back to the definitions in the Phase 2 Intro

Later “Phases” of aLBoP are mostly based around tools we had before cognition, that nobody wanted to hear, before. We’d tried everything we could figure out to share patterns that were helping us grow, personally, and nobody gave a flying crap at that point. We were humiliated and treated like we were dangerous.

Which, I guess is relatively fair, in a twisted way. I both did and didn’t know, back then, what loaded topics selfness and growth are. I both did and didn’t know the effect that people changing would have.

But I was just screwing around. I had found patterns, writing in literal hair on my bathtub wall, and I wanted to share them because they worked. I like hearing myself talk. So typing Hercules was really just goofy.

And yet, we’d already sacrificed basically everything, in the pursuit of helping other people be happy. You’re welcome to not believe that, but it’s true. You’re also welcome to think we did it stupidly. My house wouldn’t have many holes in the ceiling if we’d successfully done it for the money. So, it’s not like we happened upon a gem; we didn’t. It’s been 15+ years of much more of an upward battle than I can articulate.

But on April 6th, 2013, when I published the first post to alittlebitofpersonality.blogspot.com… I didn’t think it was going to work! I was just being me! It’s not like that had worked super well to-date by the time I was 23.5. I mean, I like to think I’m charming, but it had motivated very few people to change in my lifetime.

Maybe that’s my conclusion today? tbh I had no frickin’ clue when I started typing this, in the bathtub as usual. (Severe skin condition, for anyone who doesn’t know by now. I was going to say that I’d spend a lot less time naked if it wasn’t for psoriasis, but I don’t feel like I can actually promise that.) Where was I going… Oh, right!

I like to say that the most untapped resource on earth is human effort. And, no, I don’t mean forcing your children to garden for you. I mean that there is nothing more powerful in the world than a human being putting their own will behind intentionality, and causing something, creating something; changing something.

What stops that force? Well, many things. Lack of resources, sure, but as humans we’re all about overcoming things in our way. Problem solving is one of the most bad-A abilities about humankind, in my opinion. When properly motivated, we figure crap out. We’re solution-finding beings.

So what stops us from that motivation, from the hope requisite to find answers? (No, Docs, I’m not going to change that to “required!” It’s prettier and gets across my meaning better this way!) What stops us from using our own manpower to achieve great things?

Blockages. Emotional gunk. Our messed up current culture makes it so everyone has baggage, literally everyone, to whatever degree. And baggage weighs you down, so then you have no frickin’ clue who you are or what you’re capable of, let alone what you want to do with that capacity. When everywhere you look, everyone is emotionally exhausted, and the culture has drilled into you your entire life that “you can’t do great things,” then how the eff are you supposed to stand up, all alone, and believe you can do anything more than that?

And so often people just can’t. …Not on their own anyway. It’s hard to observe the Milky Way from inside it, and it’s hard to see the reality of you, on your own. It’s hard to see your own worth and potential when you feel barraged on every side.

And that is all that every Phase, Stage, Ring, website, and forum of aLBoP has ever been about. Literally, you want to know the purposes and goals for aLBoP that have managed to affect individuals so completely?

Help people discover truth for themselves, with us giving them the tools to find it.
Help people grow to become the best version of themselves, because people can only understand, enjoy, and be happy in reality, if they’re freed up to be themselves, and grow to a larger capacity for happiness.
Use happy, strong, capable people, who are wise enough to make their own decisions, as a force to take over the world and make it suck less.

Kinda joking on that last one, but kinda not, lol. The goal, since Justin and I were dating, was in fact to amass more resources to help people. We were just really tiny then and didn’t realize all the ways we were expecting it to go smoother than it ever did.

But I’m not going to pretend that “world domination” wasn’t always on the agenda… except it’s like if an ancient civilization had tried to take over the world entirely through spreading literacy? Like if someone’s method of taking over the world was by giving everyone in medieval Europe their own printing press? Flipping over the status quo of human misery has always been the plan, as much as is possible within our capacity, we’ve just always wanted to do it by enabling people to ask questions, find answers, think for themselves, overcome their own weaknesses… and, y’know, generally don’t be a dick.

From The Four Types of Love, a definite favorite of mine.

I do think that one of the reasons aLBoP has been able to be as powerful in the lives of individuals as it has is because we never say “You’re perfect just the way you are.” We do say “You are loved just the way you are,” but that’s not the same thing. You’re working with a great foundation of self. Now, get up and do better. Believe you can be worth even more tomorrow, by getting rid of the toxic waste that is eating you inside out. Find out who you are, love it, and then make it better. I’ve never been here to tell you who to be, but I am here to help you find who you already are, and to help you figure out who you want to be next.

Individuality is a science. You can’t just make it up, and there are physics to it, but if you find out how it ticks, you can use that to superpower yourself. Most powerful force on earth, remember?

If you discover who you are and work out your blockages and weaknesses, nothing is a more powerful force. Problem solving is in your DNA, but you have to choose to use it.

There’s a lot of opinions in the world about if “everyone is special,” and I think that’s a complicated question. I believe everyone’s existence matters. I believe everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone. But I also believe that being special is a choice, but not one based on the variety of things people try to base it on.

I believe specialness is earned, but not by currency, class, popularity or posturing. (I totally wanted to alliterate, but I think that turned out well.)

I happen to believe that you are as special as your willingness to do hard things, as your willingness to grow and face your weaknesses, even when it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done. Even when your insides scream out “ENOUGH!” Even when things seem dark and hopeless, but you push on anyway. Special is a motive, and it doesn’t come cheap. You can’t truly imitate it or hack it, as much as people try. That is the trait I believe makes one truly exceptional.

I’m pretty satisfied, to date, with feeling like I’ve earned being special, but I didn’t start out as anything special. I wasn’t smarter or anything, I just wanted to know what was real, and was willing to sacrifice to find it out. That’s all it takes, seriously.

No magic pill. Finding reality, even when it’s hard. Being willing to work through your weaknesses even when it sucks, even when those very weaknesses make you bone-shatteringly uncomfortable, about yourself, or about your worldview, or your group, or your knowledge. It’s not a complicated concept, it’s just really hard in practice.

Why don’t people change the world? Because they don’t want to change themselves first. That simple.

I’m not special in any way, except for my willingness to both love myself and want to upgrade who I was at any cost. And that is the only reason why I’m able to change lives now. All the tools I’ve discovered, writing I’ve grown practiced at, and problem solving I’ve gotten boss at, all come back to that single trait. You can’t help people if you’re not willing to change and grow, and be wrong a heckuva lot.

So anyway. I’m proud. Has it been a total mess of ten years? Absolutely. Would I trade any of the pain, sadness, longing, heartbreak, and embarrassment that me and those who have chosen to come along on this journey have slogged and grown through? While there’s a lot of things I would choose differently, that’s what growth is all about! And I absolutely would not trade away a moment of pain, when the majority of my most precious relationships have been gleaned through this website. And I feel frickin’ huge now, compared to ten years ago, holy crap!

I still can’t believe something worked. I still can’t believe that little silly me was able to change lives, just by being herself and working to be a better version of that person, every day.

Justin and Calise on the same bridge, 15th Anniversary, January 2023

But you can too. Changing lives is not an exclusive club. Being special isn’t an exclusive club. You just have to want reality, even when it’s hard. You just have to love yourself enough to keep growing. You just need the hope to be brave enough to use your human power to solve problems, inside and outside of you.

Is this the kind of thing you write for a ten year anniversary post? Eh, who the crap knows. I’m making this up as I go along, and when that doesn’t work, I try again. Let’s face it, I’ve never lied to you and pretended to be a “professional.” We don’t really have a motto at aLBoP, but if we did, a major candidate would be “Do what works.”

Desktop background of Gwen and Phil

Hey, if we have to MacGyver tools to save the world out of duct tape, paper clips, and a loofah, that is darn well what we’re going to do.

On that random note, here’s a Weezer song that has become the aLBoP anthem in my mind the past few months. (I don’t have to disclaim that Weezer doesn’t endorse us and has no crap who we are, right?) I’ve loved Weezer since early high school and only love them all the more now. When I first heard this song on the radio, it was like I’d already heard it before? You guys know what I mean, right? And then I remembered it a bit later and was listening to it over and over because it’s just so great and catchy and hopeful. I was planning on putting it in one of my stories, and might still, but I was just feeling so poked by it, like it goes with everything we work towards. So I enthused about it to aLBoP friends over chat.

… Then, the next day, I was typing another thought about it to the same friends and started typing, “A Little Bit of–” for the song title and was like “my fingers know this motion way too well… 😯 it’s like A Little Bit of Personality!!”

Yes, I’m that much of an oblivious dork, I didn’t notice the similarity to my own branding. I’m a ditz, it’s fine.

But anyway, take a listen. It’s really everything that I hope we represent, as the “aLBoP” meta project.

Lyrics

A little bit, a little bit of love
Goes a pretty long way
Take a look at where you started from
And where you are today
You climbed mountains, swam oceans
You got knocked down and kept goin’
In the end you know you’ve got to say
A little bit of love goes a pretty long way

All your wounds are healing fine
I’m so glad I got you in my life
Now the winter frost is gone
Now is our chance to live the life we want

A little bit, a little bit of love
Goes a pretty long way
Everybody, everybody’s lost
And that’s okay
Some show it, some hide it
But there’s a battle we’re all fighting
So if you’re looking for the words to say
A little bit of love goes a pretty long way

Holding onto the rabbit’s feet
Walking down the sunny side of the street
Shadows creeping at your back
You can forget ’em like an amnesiac

A little bit, a little bit of love
Goes a pretty long way
Love is really like a wonder drug
Let’s medicate
And say goodbye to the drama
It’s a beeline to Nirvana
If you’re looking for the words to say
A little bit of love goes a pretty long way

Hey, whoa, hey, whoa
Hey, whoa, hey, whoa

A little bit, a little bit of love
Goes a pretty long way
Take a look at where you started from
And where you are today
You climbed mountains, you swam oceans
You got knocked down and kept goin’
In the end, you know you’ve got to say
A little bit of love goes a pretty long way

Hey, whoa, hey, whoa
Hey, whoa, hey, whoa

A little bit of love goes a pretty long way

It’s okay to feel lost. We want to help. Use the tools; love yourself both for who you are, and who you can become, and it is my hope and my experience that it can change your life and help you climb mountains too. You don’t have to battle the scary culture keeping you down, by yourself. A Little Bit of Personality, and all its many branches, are all about loving people, and everything they can be. About celebrating people, in all their cognitive hues, and how no one can place a ceiling on the you that you can be.

Happy Ten Years, aLBoP! Let’s keep on climbing.

Much love,

<3 Calise

Sorry, Not Sorry (Where We’ve Been and Novel!)

October 2, 2021 / Calise Sellers

Hi there aLBoP peoples. A lot of you have probably wondered “are they still doing that personality thing anymore? Seriously, they haven’t posted literally anything since a global pandemic hit. And I was stuck at home a lot during that. Guys, for once I probably would have wanted to read something that was tens of thousands of words long, and that was exactly when you didn’t post anything! Think how much the algorithms would have been in your favor if you had churned stuff out when people were stuck at home and wanted to understand themselves and the people they were locked in their houses with!”

Maybe you didn’t think any of that. Maybe that’s just what I think when I stop posting things and get scared everyone moves on to something newer, sparklier, with better laid out menus and much better grammatical correctness. (That was supposed to be a case-in-point joke, but maybe that’s technically grammatically correct? Beats me.)

But you may have wondered where we went, because we get a lot of emails wondering where we went, and we’ve hardly posted any posts on this site in several years. Not like we were ever in the running for frequent or consistent update awards.

I mean, there’s plenty here to read, because Justin (my INFJ) and I are both quite wordy, to our occasional shame. And there’s so much content here that isn’t elsewhere, and with so many words, we very much encourage rereading. But so much is half-shared, half-revealed, and we understand if that’s frustrating.

We certainly haven’t forgotten that none of the FPs and TJs, except for INTJs, have Type Hero posts yet. (Guys, I’ve had the quotes for all 16 picked since 2013! It kills me too!! 😩)

Or that I said in a video in 2014 that we’d unveil Facial Typing by the end of the year. Ha. Well we’ve talked about it lots of places, and we’ve been using it for Typings since… I don’t remember honestly. Quite a few years. It works on everybody, and it just proves more consistent all the time. Anytime I get imposter syndrome, which is pretty frequently, I look back and I’m like “But wait, people who are now among my very best friends, I was able to predict their deepest fears, and desires from their faces alone, before I knew them at all.”

Like there’s an ENTP(ij) in Brazil that literally sent us a picture of his face, with no words or anything. Without facial typing, I wouldn’t have guessed ENTP(ij) from the photo or the few interactions we’d had before that point. Now he’s a great friend and runs our Twitter and makes us crack up all the time, in such an Expectable Reactions way, working like a champ on his Megamind Complex. (Sorry to pick on you, buddy 😉 I won’t mention his name, although he’s likely not to mind.)

Where was I going with that? I derailed myself. Oh, where we’ve been. Basically we didn’t forget or give up on this A Little Bit of Personality site, the cognition site, or “Phase 1” as we affectionately call it. Nor did we run out of content. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. No sir.

Nor did we stop writing, which is really the intent of this post.

People who haven’t read any of aLBoP Phase 2, or the few posts he’s written here on Phase 1, sometimes don’t know that Justin writes for aLBoP at all. Some people even think he’s quiet, or doesn’t have a lot to say 🤣. This amuses (and occasionally irks) me.

I mean, it’s fine if people just don’t know. And a lot of people probably don’t know that he wrote 98% of the COGs.

Sometimes I also get a little moody because whenever people tell us their favorite aLBoP quotes, 99% of those are from the COGs, so most of the time it’s something Justin wrote, not me, and I get dramatic “does my writing even matter and is it any good?!” feels. But it’s okay, because we’ve developed these many tools that we use on our own feels, on the daily. Also he really is a phenomenally powerful writer, so I’m really happy when people praise him. I did all the pictures for the COGs though! Well, and I was the primary discoverer of the cognition steps, and how that works, etc. It’s not like I didn’t do plenty for them. It’s just very obviously his prose. We tag team good.

But anyone who has read a fraction of “What is Smart?” or any of the Phase 2 intro, or any of the Phase 2/Phase 2-Intro posts knows my boy is eloquent AF, if you’ll pardon the expression. Also, so much wordier than I am. And I find tens of thousands of words to elaborate on the deeper, applicable meanings of scary shows and rock bands.

But Justin can talk for literal days about what the 1939 German invasion of Poland has to do with your life right now, or how to know if you’re going into emotional debt and why it’s taking a bigger toll on your life than you realize, or the 4Toi of emotion.

And he does. No joke, I’m thousands of messages behind on group chat conversations he’s had on topics like that. When he talks, he just goes. And while I tease him about tangents and getting off topic, because he certainly does that, everything he says is toward something, with something new to add to every single topic I’ve ever heard him talk about. Yes, I’m bragging. I’m allowed to do that after being married for 13.5 years and being constantly re-impressed with him. And no, I’m not going to let him edit this part, even if he’s shy about me saying all this about him. [Justin: SAYS YOU, YOU FOOL! I EDIT! By writing this here]

But none of those thousands and thousands of words he writes regularly are *here*, on Phase 1. So people just have no clue. Most of his writing is for Full Phase 2, and while we’re planning to let a bunch more people into Full Phase 2 (I hope before long), and while the awesome people who have applied have waited such a long time for us… still at the moment, it’s hidden to all but a few dozen people.

Likewise, although I am not as fast a writer as Justin, by a long shot 😩 (which he’ll “😛” about me saying, since I get mean to myself), I still write 12-15 thousand words in an average month, I’d estimate. *They’re just not here.*

Lately, for me, they’re fiction. But as Justin is fond of saying, “A good story is worth a thousand lectures.” There’s a reason that Sensing and iNtuition are equal functions, that we all need both of: Concepts are not enough on their own. Everyone needs Experience. And sure, we can stumble through life, requiring to have every experience ourselves before we learn and apply things. Or, we can learn from what other people have been through, be it history or fantasy, as long as those stories mirror reality. Sci-fi and fantasy don’t “not count,” so long as they reflect all four Types of Information accurately. In fact, sometimes suspending real life rules, we can find the beautiful universal truths underneath them, seeing sides of things and people that we might not get to otherwise. We can learn vicariously through situations we might never experience on our own, and that shows us things about others and ourselves that we’d likely not find alone.

Basically, long story short, I’ve been spending the majority of my writing time on the story of a boy with good motives and terrible decisions (no, he’s not an EP, shockingly. Js can make terrible decisions too, believe it or not 😉), who is forced down a path to discover who his “self” really is, when the whole world, and seemingly circumstances, tell him that selfness is fleeting and changeable.

So, I’m really truly sorry that there haven’t been new cognition posts, to help carry you through a global pandemic, with new heights of domestic violence, uncertainty and hopelessness, that many of us weren’t used to in our lives before that. Please believe that a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about how many are searching for lights at the ends of tunnels, not new, but certainly not improved by world events the last few years. And maybe I did write a 20k word post about Hope and Depression, about 3.5 months before the pandemic hit, that you could have/can now go read, to help, I hope… I’m still sorry it wasn’t just cognition tools, and I’m even more sorry if you felt left alone in the cold.

I’m sorry we take a really long time to reply to Typing orders sometimes. We do really care, both about you having the vulnerability to email us about yourself, and pictures of your face, and that you give us your valuable resources in exchange. We do really appreciate people paying for typings. I am going to throw out there that if we were in this for the money, we would be really really stupid to go about it this way. Like epic levels of stupid and arrogant. Which we’ve been called, so, just sayin’. We still do typings, fyi for the people who worry when we take a while to reply. They’re just not the primary thing we do under the umbrella of “aLBoP.”

My mom had a sweet friend who wanted to buy a t-shirt recently, after I typed her, and I was embarrassed that when I looked, I had the wrong URL for the shirt website. That’s how long it had been since I had given thought to people buying t-shirts, long enough for Spreadshirt to change how their URLs work. (And have a data-leak, so I’m sorry if you got an email about needing to change your password and stuff.) It’s just not the priority right now, at all. (That being said, if you still want a t-shirt, here’s the updated URL, lol. I haven’t changed links anywhere else. I’m fully aware they’re wrong, I just have other things to do.)

It’s not that teaching you about cognition isn’t important. That’s not why there haven’t been more posts. It’s not that I hate popularity and money, or milking the easy algorithm of “MBTI” or other topics people *actually search for.* It’s that we are two individual people, trying to build an undersea city, and Phase 1 sees the spire of the tallest building, and thinks that’s all we have. I’m sorry if the paint job on the tower is scuffed. But I’m a little busy building Atlantis with my scuba gear. Is that an arrogant analogy? Probably! But I don’t got time for modesty for the sake of appearances either.

You know how most social apps recommend stuff to you, based on what you’ve already read/watched/listened to? They have whole apps based on that concept, recommending stuff you’ll like, based on stuff you already like. It’s like a more surface level version of Sources (of using Perceiving to know who to trust and listen to). That’s all I’m doing with this post:

“So you like A Little Bit of Personality? If you like that, you’ll probably like…”

Except in this case, I’m saying if you like this website, because it makes things feel clear, because you can find things here that you’ve never found anywhere else, and they work—not just in theory or concept, but *in practice*—and you want more; if you keep checking back because what we said made the clouds part, and you want to experience that again, then we’ve got more where that came from. Not right here, not solely about cognition, and some of it gated—never financially, but by a demonstration of applying what we shared to that point—but guys, we have so much more where that came from.

And I’d recommend, on your tour of a much larger aLBoP world, (before the Phase 2 Intro, if you haven’t read that yet) your next stop be A Little Bit of Calise and Barry Anderson: An Unexpected Fairy Tale. Read the Foo Fighters post about hope, and my silly Sides posts, and consider if you have aspects of your selfness that need some love. And I have just posted the second chapter of Barry Anderson, my novel that I’m posting one chapter at a time. (I also just posted the audiobook version of the first chapter, and the “soundtrack” songs that go with the first two chapters, and commentary about them. Because I’m extra like that.)

It’s about fairies. And gender. And selfness. And becoming the best version of yourself, while still being you—which has always been the entire goal of this website. Why is that worth taking years away from posting about cognition? (Even though over 250k words of Barry, so far, are far from all I’ve been doing the last few years, it’s still been my most central project, I’d say. *Disclaimer*: Two chapters aren’t most of that word count… well, okay, they’re 41k together, but the plot has barely even started by the end of Chapter 2!! (For scale, the *longest* chapter of Harry Potter is 9,001 words. I’m so sorry.))

But yeah, let me repeat the question: Why is a comedy story about fairy godmothers worth leaving people without the help that understanding cognition might provide? Because, despite my constant argument with myself, Barry Anderson is *not* just a silly, mildly scandalous novel, in a genre that’s basically “Shakespeare Comedy meets 80’s Teen Flick,” although it certainly is all of those things. Not that I’m doubting the emotional power of Twelfth Night, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Better Off Dead, or Back to the Future, which I study with rapture, from the hands of story lords. But mine is written with the same purpose as this website.

My first novel, “completed” on my sixteenth birthday, had a few different names over my teen years. I felt like I had to call it something cool or no one would want to read it. As a teenager, I didn’t feel like I could just call a story “Ellic.” It had to be “The Kingdom Chronicles: A Hope for Identity”, with “The Kingdom Chronicles” being the series title, and “A Hope for Identity” being that particular story. This was later replaced by “The Dallanian Kingdom Chronicles: Ellic’s Story”, which ain’t half bad, so I don’t know if any of that will stay when I rewrite it later. But most of the time I just call it “Ellic.”

I’ve come to embrace the fact that all my stories are first and foremost character stories, and almost* all of my elevenish active stories are named for the protagonist(s). So the title is literally one or two protagonist names, or a name that describes the protagonist group. (*Okay, there are two exceptions. I forgot those at first, and changed my wording, lol. But those are named for the central plot-nouns that involve the characters changing.)

But “Barry Anderson: A Hope for Identity” would probably be even more fitting than the title would have been for Ellic (although they’re both sixteen-year-old INFJ(j)s. Paradoxitype and stuff! Don’t judge!). Identity is a humanity battleground, and honestly I’m tired of all arguments on all sides of such issues. I’m tired of so many of the arguments related to central questions of human nature, being groups of people flinging feces in the dark.

Do you want to know who you are? Are you tired of other people defining that, badly? Does aLBoP help you feel like you can find your forever-self, while not capping anything about who that person can be? Well have I got the story for you! 😉

It’s not a children’s story, despite having a lot of fairies, tutus, glitter and rhymes. You could play a drinking game with the number of mammary euphemisms there are (some of which I’m exceedingly proud of). But it’s got heart; a lot of raw, exposed, vulnerable heart. And I think that’s what the world needs right now, along with themes about choice, change, plans, hope, and “the jewel of each soul.”

So, I guess, TL;DR: We’ve been gone because we were prioritizing other parts of aLBoP, never because we didn’t care, or gave up. And I’m sharing one of my novels, and it’s fun and you should, like, totally read it! It has the same objectives as this website, so if you’re into that kinda thing, then it’ll be your jam.

Although if you really didn’t read this because this post was too long, this probably won’t be your favorite website ever, heads-up. You probably won’t like our other websites, sorry. You can be excused.

Anyway, I realized I never said over here that I had posted any of my fiction, so sorry if anyone wanted to read it and just didn’t know! Hey, if you would, comment below about how you see when we update, so I can try and use those methods more.

Not just saying, really true:
<3 Much love,
Calise

aLBoCal, and a Post about Depression, Hope, and Foo Fighters

December 6, 2019 / Calise Sellers

Hello my neglected, yet not-forgotten loves ❤️. I’m not going to roll around in sackcloth and ashes about how long it’s been, nor am I going to make promises that I might not be able to fulfill. I do however have a thing for you. It’s a post!

Most of you might not know that I started a personal site last year, A Little Bit of Calise (or aLBoCal, because “aLBoC” sounded dumb). As my self-titled aLBoP spinoff, its purpose was never to replace aLBoP, by any means, but to be both a place I could blab about me-related, personal topics, and as an on-ramp to aLBoP, where people can get a taste of what we offer over here without feeling overwhelmed by jargon. The hope is also that new people, who might not be interested in mainstream personality typing might find it, while Googling other topics.

But it’s still aLBoPy writing (because, hello, that’s still what I care about day-to-day, and let’s face it, it’s not like I don’t talk about myself plenty over here 😉).

And almost all the posts up to now (which isn’t many) involve the Four Sides of Calise, which are a silly, ongoing thought experiment, helping me to explore myself. And if that’s not cognition related, I don’t know what is.

The Data geek, the people-loving Obs glitter-pop princess, the Paradoxitype Greek goddess, and the oh-so-edge succubus– QUEEN OF MEGAMIND COMPLEX! 😈 *Ahem*

But really why I’m talking about it now, is because I just posted a post over there called Learn to Fly: My Thoughts on Depression, Hope, and Silliness, through Enjoying Foo Fighters (because apparently I hate writing titles that search engine optimization want anything to do with). But it’s basically a half-step between aLBoP and aLBoCal. It started as a silly post talking about music I was getting rapidly obsessed with, and ended up being a reflection on rising from the ashes of our lives, by looking at how the band Foo Fighters rose from the ashes of Nirvana. There’s bits here and there about cognitive types and how they affected people’s choices, like cognitive cameos, if you will.

But it’s about my exploration of where hope comes from, if silliness is disrespectful when people are hurting, and why fakery hurts people. It’s about people doing people things 🤷. So if that’s what you come here for in the first place, then I think you’ll love aLBoCal, and this post.

…there’s also a lot of cross dressing. Do you have any clue how often the Foo Fighters cross dress? Omigosh it’s so often guys!

So please give it a try. It took a whole lotta love. If you’re an aLBoPer, I think you’ll love it.

<3 Much love,
Calise

Here’s a taste of Learn to Fly: My Thoughts on Depression, Hope, and Silliness, through Enjoying Foo Fighters…

When I started writing this post, I was really struggling with why this was worth talking about. You may have clicked on this post because of the serious topics mentioned in the header, but that’s not why I started writing this. Like most things in my life, this little project started as a result of me enjoying people to a silly degree. There’s a lot of silly stuff in this post; there’s stick figures, there’s looking at how the Four Sides of Calise enjoy music (from my angsty gothic succubus side to my lollipop-glitter princess side), there’s a lot of me going googly over how much I love men (in and out of women’s clothing), there’s a lot of 90s/00s nostalgia, and me watching music/concert videos way too closely.

And I started writing all that silly, basically because it wouldn’t leave me alone; my passion rarely will. But I was seriously just screwing around. I pictured the brief stick figure comic at the end of this post and thought I’d just preface it by how much I’ve come to love this music lately. Honestly I was just having fun talking. But as I was trying to quick-finish this post over a weekend (pfffft, when am I going to learn that I suck at brevity?!?) I was just struggling on repeat with why the &@%$= writing this mattered.

Like seriously, why the zombie (we’re making that an expletive now, roll with it) should anyone care that someone named Calise likes certain types of rock music, or gets really excited about the facial expressions someone makes while playing the drums?? And even more than that, why would anyone want to read something blissfully dancing around in silliness while the world just sucks right now?

Most of the people I know are having a “hard year.” I literally cannot enumerate the number of people I care about who have or are currently struggling with heavy bouts of depression or anxiety. And the number of times this year alone I’ve heard phrases akin to “I thought we’d be together forever,” as I’ve seen relationships come to an abrupt and heart-wrenching end. People are in serious stomach-plunging freefall right now.

So who am I to be happy??

Read the full post here

5 Years

April 6, 2018 / Calise Sellers

Five years today since I posted “Disney Typed: Hercules” and embarked on the first 5 years of A Little Bit of Personality. I can’t tell you what those five years have meant to me.

Sure, I’m proud of the breakthroughs we’ve had in understanding human cognition and quantifying the world via basic dichotomies, but that isn’t why I wouldn’t trade these last five years for literally anything.

I can’t tell you what the *people* of aLBoP mean to me, those I’ve met through my silly little collection of stick figures and thought-vomit. The people of aLBoP don’t claim perfection, they claim something better: a desire to be more, to learn more and to understand more. They’re intelligent, caring, and love to think for themselves and add to the things we’ve discovered.

I couldn’t ask for better “readers” or better friends. I use readers snarkily, as people who love aLBoP have become so much more than that.

Thank you to everyone, whether you’ve stuck around for 5 years, as slow as we’ve posted sometimes, or if you just found aLBoP last week.

aLBoP is for you. Every word I write, every stick I make, every person I type, I picture your reactions and how it’ll hopefully make you laugh, make you smile, make you think and hopefully help you feel a little bit closer to being the you you’ve always known was in you.

Love you for realz.
<3 Calise (and Justin)

aLBoP a Scam? Drama, Scandal, Ooh Ahh!

November 3, 2017 / Calise Sellers

Once upon a time, last winter, we moved A Little Bit of Personality to WordPress from Blogger. It was a long, tedious process with a lot of formatting (which on some posts I’m still not pleased with). The site was down for almost a month. All the urls changed, even though I went through and made redirects for as many as I could. And all our Google+ comments got removed (which honestly was part of the point of moving platforms. It was being an annoying system).

All this led to the complex set of algorithms which is Google Search to be very confused as to what was important on aLBoP. When you Googled aLBoP or A Little Bit of Personality, suddenly it was trying to give search results of random image links and obscure posts, instead of things people really wanted to find, such as Type Specializations, the Super Simple Series or Type Heroes.

It also didn’t help that we were working on other aspects of aLBoP and life in general, so posting has been a slow game all year. As I understand it, Google prioritizes frequent posting, as well as Google+ shares (nepotism ? lol), neither of which were in our favor anymore.

But this also meant that non-aLBoP links, especially from popular sites, suddenly came up much earlier in search results. One in particular, with the most click-bait-y subject line ever, notably rose to the first page of search results right away: a forum thread with the subject line “A Little Bit of Personality Blog: Is it a scam or did I overreact?”

Well if the promise of a scam won’t get people to listen to you, I don’t know what will. Talk about the most buzzwordy word possible lol. Continue reading

It’s Coming…

May 21, 2015 / Calise Sellers

There’s something coming… {Insert Jaws music here}

It’s the big thing you’ve all been waiting for… {Insert summer blockbuster music}

And it’s all for *you!!* {Insert cheesy game show music}

With the educationalism of a show with puppets, and accessibility that may make many “How to Draw” books hang their heads in shame… {Insert “Learning is Fun!” music)

And all with the aim of making *you* feel like you don’t need to have a cape (or be like someone else) to be a hero. And this is exactly the real-life applicable guide you need to do it! 😉

What we used to attempt to cover in our Personalized Personality PDFs has now had an extreme makeover (I never watched that show, did it have music?) and has now been transformed into our insanely longer, incomparably more in-depth Cognitive Orientation Guidebooks or COGs (Spoiler alert: we tried for the cool acronym ;D) — 16 distinctive eBooks with more info than ever before on the following:

– E vs. I

– P vs. J

– First and Last letter combinations

– N vs. S

– F vs. T

– Middle Letter combinations

– Each type’s unique Cognition Steps

– Type Specializations

– Type Angsts (including all *8* that haven’t been released yet!!)

– Paradoxitype

All in an easy to understand, this-leads-to-that format 😀 Are you excited yet? I hope so!! It’s been such a labor of love… for you guys! <3 We’re so proud to be *about* to release our babies into the world!! Soon. So soon! I’m not kidding, all the words are done (160,000 of them :-O), I just have some pictures to finish!

Just to get you a little more stoked, here’s the first two pages of INFP – The Ranger:

So get ready, and before you know it… {Insert creepy little girl whispering “It’s here!”}

Much love,

<3 Calise and Justin, her INFJ

Alphanumeric Typing: Intro

April 1, 2015 / Calise Sellers

Update – April 2, 2015: I’m adding a needed disclaimer that this article was posted for April Fools’ Day, 2015. It is an intended parody of the all-too-common pseudoscience found in the field of personality typing. Though I worked hard to make it dry, I honestly thought everyone would be able to tell it was a joke by how over the top it was, but I think it drives my point home that much harder that *many* people took it seriously. These are attitudes found throughout psychology. They’re dangerous, horrendously abusive to individuals’ sense of self-worth, let alone blatantly unscientific. I’m sorry if my attempt to roll my eyes came far too close to the truth. (But we really are writing the Modular Personalized Typings and Cognition: The Super Simple Version! That was legit ;)) ~

<3 Calise

Hi everyone! I’m super excited for what I have to share with you today, even though as we’ve been hard at work on the Modular Personalized Typings (which, as with pretty much everything on aLBoP, are turning out way more in-depth, long and detailed than previously expected ;)), and so I only have time to give you a brief intro to Alphanumeric Typing, which is sure to require many posts in the future! As you guys know, here on aLBoP we’re always looking for new ways to understand the human mind, as well as listening to you in order to find new ways to help you understand yourself and everyone around you! Alphanumeric Typing is no different, and I think you’ll appreciate its elegance and simplicity that anyone can understand!

One complaint we hear a lot on aLBoP is that the letters are too confusing. Though we’ve tried to simplify this problem with posts like What Do All These Letters Mean Anyway?, The Cognition Process in Stick Figures and Cognition: The Super Simple Version (that I am currently writing), there are still issues with reading comprehension or complaints of TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read). To help this problem, we (my INFJ and I) have come up with an easy Alphanumeric system since, let’s face it, numbers are easier to understand than letters.

Innovative Alphanumeric System!

Now this part couldn’t be easier; it’s amazing how formulaic the human mind can really be. Each letter has a simple number value, based solely on its position in the English alphabet, so this method is open to anyone who knows the alphabet! Imagine the world opened to kindergarteners and adults alike! In case you hadn’t already guessed, this is based on a straightforward system of A=1, B=2, etc., as follows:

· E = 5

· I = 9

· N = 14

· S = 19

· T = 20

· F = 6

· P = 16

· J = 10

As the order of the alphabet is very important and not at all arbitrary, we can see how this shows the significance and worth of each letter in isolation.

Therefore T (Thinking) is the most valuable personality variable, followed closely by S (Sensing). This should really be a given anyway, as everyone seems to already know those personality traits are more important anyway! 🙂

More surprisingly though, as it is more often taken for granted, is the value of P (Perceiving), as the alphabet clearly states its worth over J (Judging), but perhaps this is an archaic holdover as J was the last letter added to the alphabet, it may have formerly been given more credence than it deserved.

It should be pointed out that in this system, discrepancy of letters accounts for more value than the letter’s value on its own. For example, E (Extraversion) is worth the least at 5, but since its opposite, I (Introversion), is only worth 9, Extraversion is only slightly less worthwhile. However F (Feeling) has the highest discrepancy, with T = 20 being worth 14 more than F = 6. Therefore Feeling is obviously the least valuable personality variable.

Alphanumeric Combinations

When we bring together these combinations of letters, we can now understand the individual types in a way we never could before; by ranking them each numerically!

I thought the types might simply be ranked alphabetically, but the brilliance of this system, with each letter having an individual value, is that it gets rid of the old conventions of left-to-right thinking and takes each letter according to its own merit.

· ISTP = 64

· ESTP = 60

· INTP = 59

· ISTJ = 58

· ENTP = 55

· ESTJ = 54

· INTJ = 53

· ISFP = 50

· ENTJ = 49

· ESFP = 46

· INFP = 45

· ISFJ = 44

· ENFP = 41

· ESFJ = 40

· INFJ = 39

· ENFJ = 35

From this we see that ISTP is the best, but honestly, didn’t we already know that?

As this demonstrates, scientifically, in general terms Feelers are of less worth than Thinkers, with the rare exception of ENTJ, who seems to have gotten the short end of the Thinking gene stick, coming even below one of the Feeling types. But don’t worry, we still need the Feelers for things like taking care of puppies and being walked over like doormats!

On a personal note, I think I should point out that I am okay being the fifth from the top. After all, not everyone can be the best. 😉

I hope this has been a helpful peek at exciting things to come! This is just a glimpse of what typing systems like Alphanumeric Typing can do for you! Oh, and if you’re new to the site, or just reading this after the first of April, you may want to check out Type Specializations:What Makes My Type Special? for a little different look at the value of different people and different types of cognition 🙂

Much love,

<3 Calise

Give a Little Personality: A Gift Guide by Type

December 23, 2014 / Calise Sellers

Give a Little Personality
A Gift Guide by Type

Merry Christmas everyone! Or whatever you celebrate 😉 Better late than never and as requested, we have a handy little guide for giving gifts according to personality!

Rather than a specific list of individual items, we thought it would be of more value to share with you the principles of what motivates each type and the trends we’ve noticed about what each personality enjoys! So then this will be useful all year round and not just two days before Christmas 😛

This is our first hybrid post (woo-hoo!) with both a video and written portion (mid-term flashback *shiver*). Watch the video for our full in-depth versions of what we think each type would like and why (with the option to skip forward 😉 It’s a pretty long video), and check out the summaries and full-sized pics below for each type at-a-glance!

A Follow-Up to “A Call to Action”

September 5, 2014 / Calise Sellers

A follow-up to this post.

Thank you guys soooo so much! I am so grateful to all of you who have reached out to us with love and concern and showed us just how much aLBoP means to you!! Wow! I’m overwhelmed with how loving and active so many of you have been! The response has been tremendous, and while I so appreciate the monetary sacrifices so many of you have made in the last two days, I equally appreciate those who have come forward and said, “I can’t give money, but what can I do?”

Several of you, though, were hurt by feeling like maybe I was too harsh when a lot of you had had good reasons for not giving to aLBoP. From not knowing that there even was a donate option, or where to find it, to your own financial struggles, many of you had good, well-intentioned reasons for not giving before. While I’m truly sorry if you were hurt by the post on Wednesday, here are my reasons for posting what I did. This is adapted from my comment response on a friend’s website who talked about how Wednesday’s post made her feel. After I wrote it, my INFJ said it was exactly what all of you needed to hear 🙂 ~

“…That being said, even though my post hurt you, doesn’t mean it was the wrong move for me to write it and post it. I’ve gotten several responses from sweet people like you, assuming that the post was a knee-jerk response to the hurt I was feeling, rather than a calculated move that I had to work up to, that was very hard for me to stand up and do. I’m an ENTP and it’s much easier for me to make a joke and laugh off what I’m doing as just a clever little project, than it is to acknowledge the scope of what I’m trying to accomplish. This is really hard to type at the moment! 🙂

But I need to own up to the fact that it had really gotten that bad. That the voices of the sweet people who loved aLBoP were getting drowned by the words, attitudes and actions of the loud, entitled crowd who had a personal investment in pretending aLBoP was no different than any mbti website that wants to pigeon hole people for their own enmity-filled validation. And I truly wasn’t sure that any of you sweet people were really going to do anything about it. I wasn’t exaggerating the doubt I had that the purpose of aLBoP was *ever * going to work. Lack of donations just seemed like a tragic symbol to me of how little people were willing to act…

…It’s not about aLBoP as a website. Yes, if I’m going to continue (which I am), it’d be nice to be able to afford our own mortgage without help, eventually, but that’s not the point. We’re trying to gather people who are willing to take action, change, and stand up, so that together we can actually do something to fix this culture. We’re trying to enable the people who already want to do wonderful things in this world, but feel stopped by their own weaknesses and insecurities, or feel like the opposition to try is just too much, or those who want to do something, but just don’t know what.

You obviously want to do great things, but feel like there are distinct blockages in your way, and on top of that it seems like you have doubts about what you could do that would really make any difference anyway. I believe that there are so many good people who want to really do real heroic things to change the world around us for the better, but most people believe that in the end, efforts to change the world end up rather futile. And honestly, when uncoordinated and without perspective, most of them are. But with the right tools to change oneself first, they don’t have to be futile.

I see so much depression in good people—people who so deserve to feel happy—and though I know the chemicals coursing through their bodies are real and so powerful, that doesn’t mean there is nothing to be done psychologically. I see amazing people like ENFP Robin Williams, who spent their whole lives helping people, just to feel like their whole life’s work was futile, what with all the #*-% in this world. And I think, ‘I can fix that! I know how!’ People just have to be willing to listen, act and apply, which is never an easy feat. Changing is hard. Looking at the baggage deep within you is hard!

But if people are just willing to try, just willing to put forth the effort, even when it’s scary to step out into the darkness, then we can actually do something to fix the world! Something that will actually work! I’ve seen the principles work in my own life and others’ and I know I can help other people with them too.

Sorry, that was long (you guys are used to that from me ;)). But those are the reasons I thought it was worth it to shock people into action. I’m sorry if *you* didn’t need it and it hurt you that I thought you did. But know that some people, possibly many, did…”

A Call to Action

September 3, 2014 / Calise Sellers

This might be the final post on aLBoP. I don’t want it to be. I haven’t even finished the basic intro stuff, I haven’t done half the Type Heroes, and I have so many entire new series of posts waiting to be unveiled, which I haven’t even gotten to touch yet! But since I already know all this stuff, what’s the point in sharing it if no one really wants to hear it, use it, and go forward and benefit from it? If you’re not willing to take action to use what I give you, then what on earth am I doing?

Hundreds of emails, hundreds of comments, thousands of repins and hundreds of thousands of site views… but not $1 in aLBoP donations. Of the hundreds of people who have left wonderful comments, I have an awfully hard time believing not one of them could spare $1 for a website they claim to love. It makes me so happy to receive your sweet comments and emails, and I’ve felt so terrible for not yet getting back to most of you, but it’s been hard to prioritize it when not one of you has been willing to put action behind your words. It makes me feel used, and it certainly makes me feel like very few of you, if any, are really willing to take action to apply anything I share. If you can’t take the simple action of showing even a measly sprinkling of love for aLBoP, then what clearer message do I need? And if you can’t or won’t take the simple action of showing genuine gratitude and support by taking advantage of a straightforward, fun, rewards-based, simple-as-paypal donation system, then how can I possibly expect you to take the far more complex and painful action of applying the principles of cognitive psychology in your lives?