Type 8 | Nine Paths

Category Archives: Type 8

Don, Don, He’s a 1!

Posted on 06/25/2012 | Leave a comment

Don and I have been critiquing each other’s writing for about five years. Shortly after we met, he completed an Enneagram test that figured him to be a 9. I didn’t know him very well then, so a 9 he was. Although every once in a while I wondered about that, we never talked about the Enneagram until I decided to start this blog, at which time he completed my Stance Keyword Comparison Checklist. The results indicated he was a Compliant type, and we soon determined he’s a 1w9—a profile that fits him much better and explains quite a lot.

So, in one corner of the critique ring, wearing the white trunks, we have:

Do It the Right Way (Don)

and over in the other corner, wearing the black trunks:

Do It My Way (me)

Thank goodness for the moderating influence of our wings, his 9 and my 7. Sure, we’ve had a couple of minor skirmishes. One time when we were meeting as part of a critique group in a bookstore café, I took the lid off my cup of coffee, and the person to my right backed away from the table, assuming I intended to toss the contents at Don. But no knockout punches have been delivered to date and no liquid refreshments have been tossed. Continue reading →

Bob Marley: a Messianic State of Mind

Posted on 06/22/2012 | 4 comments

Last weekend, I met some friends at the Guild Theater to see the new documentary, Marley, by Kevin Macdonald. When I got home afterward, I loaded up the CD player with Exodus, Babylon by Bus, Catch a Fire (both discs), and Confrontation. That left five more CDs for round two. Yeah, I’m a Bob Marley fan. I’ve read Catch a Fire, the Life of Bob Marley, by Timothy White a couple of times and have watched Time Will Tell, the documentary on the DVD, Legend, multiple times, too.

It’s kind of hard to see through the curtain of smoke produced by all the ganja Robert Nesta Marley smoked to what might have been his core personality, and I’m not generally in favor of typing public figures, but I’m going to take a stab at it in this case. I think Marley was a straight-up 8—no wing.

In addition to growing up in extreme poverty and violence in Trenchtown (next to Kingston, the capital of Jamaica), he was viewed as an outcast because his mother was black and his father—who he was named after, but who didn’t stick around—was white. As a youth, he was a bit of a brawler. One of his nicknames was Tuff Gong, which became the name of his record label. From Catch a Fire: Continue reading →