Many people have asked me how I'm able to make music and do other creative things, and be a homemaker. The answer is easy: I'm a lousy housekeeper. Luckily, I married a man who doesn't care about and in fact appreciates the fact that I'm not a neat freak and therefore more forgiving of his own sloppiness around the apartment. Likewise, many people have asked him why he often does the cooking and especially the cleaning. Again, the answer is easy: because he'd rather give me the time I need to be creative.
When I think about how fortunate I am to have found someone so perfect for me, who loves me exactly as I am, I'm always reminded of two things: one, the Myers-Briggs Personality Test (MBTI), and how neat freaks like the ISTJ type can only be happy with a like-minded type. I now understand that the opposite is also true, that two creatives who don't have much time to keep a pristine home can't be happy with neat freaks that will be demanding of personal sacrifice. Of course, I am the demanding wife who can only be with a man who is willing to do more than his traditional share. As long as he's strong, he says he's perfectly willing and able to help with the bulk of the labor needed to keep things under livable conditions. I am still responsible for managing the house, which means I need to stay aware of whatever needs to get done as tasks loom. We, with our bad backs suffering from sciatica, do the best we can.
As unkempt as our abode is, it's not quite CBGB or the bars and clubs I used to get bookings to play that literally smelled like piss. No, it's not nearly as bad as that, and I refuse to live with bugs, so I will at least keep it clean to that end, being obsessive about food garbage. I think as long as we were able to keep house (with a housekeeper once a week, a wedding gift from my mother-in-law) while our children were babies to keep small things off the floor and everywhere else, we did our part. The rest is a luxury, including having our kids grow up in a house where we didn't wear shoes inside as we do today.
Another thing I think of is how my family and relatives in Japan would not approve of my lifestyle, probably seeing me as a 'fuyrō' meaning punk or 'not good.' When I think of an actual punk, not someone with a punk style like a headbanger, I'm reminded of being on location for my old job as a Japanese TV presenter in the Lower East Side getting a lit cigarette thrown at me (he missed) by a punk who did that because he hated 'the media.' In my mind, he was a shit, but even he's better than some Nazi who would beat me for being a bad housekeeper.
Whatever MBTI type I am, I'm sure of one thing, which is that I'm very lucky to be the non-ISTJ with a fellow non-ISTJ. To dirt-proof this place as much as possible, our walls get the soundproofing foam treatment, and our fridge holographic vinyl stickers I made of my drawings as seen in our animated music videos that I still have left over after we gave them out for free. With musical instruments in almost every room, there's actually that cool, artsy Bowery vibe, so we should probably just start shooting our videos here one day. I'm sharing this because I'm so done being embarrassed about the lifestyle choices I've made. I wouldn't be able to make any music while being female otherwise.
Would you like to take a crack at guessing my MBTI type? Feel free to leave me a comment!
No comments:
Post a Comment