When’s the last time you said, “Remember when…?”  What do you think your life will be like in 10 years and how easy is it for you to “see” that?  What the hell am I smoking, asking these bizarre questions?  Just another little slice of my brain I thought I’d use for a blog topic….

Writing is, for some of us, an excuse to delve into psychology.  The better you understand the psyche of your characters, the more realistic, compelling characters you can create.  Enneagrams, Briggs-Myers, birth order, zodiac signs, archetypes…if you’re a fiction writer, you’ve probably come across at least some of these as a means of understanding your characters better, but I find they’re as fun and interesting to apply to real people as fictional characters.

One of these personality theories, I’ll call it, for lack of a better name, is whether a person exists primarily in the past, the present or the future.

A couple of my friends are very much “past” people.  They remember EVERYTHING.  Details from grade school that are buried deep in my memory and only surface when they bring them up, college exploits that I’ve blocked out…things that I consider inconsequential… “past” people love to reminisce about this stuff.  In detail.

Then there’s the “present” type.  They don’t talk about the past a lot, don’t plan for the future much or have a clear path for where they’re going.  They probably don’t really know where they’re going.  They’re consumed by the right now.  What they have to do today, how they’re feeling right now, maybe what they’re doing in two hours.  But not next week!

And finally there’s the “future” type.  Always planning, or if he or she doesn’t have a specific plan or pathway figured out to reach a goal — or worse yet, can’t figure out a long-term goal — he or she is seriously disturbed and frets about it until a plan is in place.  My husband fits this type.  He had his college and career path planned from about 8^th grade. *shudder*

Any idea what type you are?  I think I’m a “present”…I don’t plan more than about a week out, and I can’t remember *$&% about the past without someone seriously jogging my memory.

For fun, here are a couple of websites with short interactive quizzes that will tell you what type you are:

http://blogthings.com/doyouliveinthepastpresentorfuturequiz/

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/past-present-and-future-personality-quiz

The first one seems more accurate, saying I’m a “present”.  The second one is more based on dating and said I’m a “future”, but I don’t know how reliable it can be to ask a woman who’s been married for 17 years about her dating behavior.  *grin*

If you take the quiz, let me know what type it says you are and if you agree.  If nothing else, it’s a fabulous means of procrastination.

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