Sunrise, Sunset

by Robison Wells

Today is my birthday. I'm mentioning this at the beginning so that I can come back to it later, but rest assured: I will come back to it.

A year or so ago I took the Meyers-Briggs personality test. I've taken many personality tests in my life, though I don't really know why. I know what I'm like – why do I need a test to remind me? (And, when the test is accurate, why am I surprised? I mark the answers indicating I'm disorganized and lazy, and it returns the results: "You're disorganized and lazy." And rather than realize that I just told the test those things, I marvel at its precision. It's like speaking to a paper prophet, says I.)

Anyway, the tests I've taken are myriad, and the results are all over the chart. I took a big set of tests back when I was just beginning at the community college, wondering what career path I should pursue. The answer? Either chemical engineering or Catholic priesting. (I'm not sure how the test was designed, but every single Returned Missionary I knew was told that joining the ranks of the paid clergy was a good idea.)

I recently took The Color Code test, on the recommendation of Candace Salima, who recently taught a writing class on using the code to better develop your fictional characters. That test told me that I'm very very white (I must have marked the Can't Jump box), that I'm a little red and blue, and a teensy tiny bit yellow. (And, whereas in the real world being yellow is negative (you're a coward), in The Color Code yellow means you like to party all the time. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, I guess.)

Anyway, the Meyers-Briggs test told me that I'm an INTP (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving). Of this personality, it is said: "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." Kinda sweet, eh? I'm not introverted because I don't like to party – I'm introverted because I venture so deeply into thought.

However, the description continues: "A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure." And this, my friends, is where my birthday comes in to the picture.

The thing is, I'm getting old. Time continues to fly by at a break-neck pace, and I wake up some mornings, look around me, and say "Wait – it's 2006? Wasn't it 1999, like, three days ago?" And ultimately, my problem is that I just can't keep up. I look at my job, and I look at my book-writing career, and I look at all the little things I want to do in my life (like paint pretty pictures or travel the world), and I just can't imagine it happening. Because I'm getting old, and must soon pass on. I have one foot in the grave.

It's not like I'm failing currently. I write books, and they get published, and people buy them. But will I ever be the next Jack Weyland? The LDS Dan Brown? Will I ever visit Tblisi, or climb the steps of Angkor Wat? Will my oil paintings ever get third place in the state fair? The haunting sense of impending failure, my friends. I'll give it a week before my life comes crashing down like a house of cards.

So as the sands of time trickle through the hourglass of cliché, I watch another birthday come and go. My hair is turning gray. My knees crack when I stand up. And this summer is my ten-year high school reunion. I'm twenty-eight. I might as well be dead.