10 Years

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?

1. Help people discover truth for themselves, with us giving them the tools to find it.
2. 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.
3. 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.

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