How Do You Roll?

I'm having dinner tonight with my friend G who's growing into a deeper friendship with me. (That's a story for another time.) Anyway, we were talking on Sunday and revealed our secret inner insecurities.

I wish I were more task-oriented like G is. A doer. You know The Doers: the ones who maintain deliciously beautiful homes at all times. Mundane Housekeeping Tasks seems to come naturally to them, and they never sit still and just think, or sit still and just read, because the To Do list looms over their heads.

She wishes she were more analytic-oriented like I am. I'm a thinker, and I know us. We read the dictionary to find new words we don't know. (Saturday evening I spent an hour with a fellow thinker. We each read our own dictionary*, sharing new and exciting words aloud to each other...) We sit and think and analyze for hours. We sometimes do kooky things just to see what would happen. (In the college dining hall, I once ate my entire meal of chili-mac off my tray, not off a plate. Just to see what would happen.)

Here are some implications:

• Why do the both of us assume there's something wrong with the way we were created?
• Why does each of us assume we are lazy because we don't operate the way the other does? I feel the pain of my innate laziness because I don't Do as much as she does; I daresay she feels the same sort of insecurity when compared to my Constant Thinking and Analyzing.
• Why can't I accept her help in making me a better Doer, a better Housekeeper? More accurately, why am I hesitant to accept her help?
• Which type of acumen is assumed to be more usable? (You can get tutoring anywhere...I'm tutoring a girl in my Linguistics class on the finer points of grammar, and I could tutor my friend G in doctrine and theology if she wanted...but honoring your innate talent for Do-ing and Housekeeping by tutoring people like me who just aren't Doers? That's a bold idea.) To rephrase and clarify my question: who is considered to be more important: white-collar workers or blue-collar workers? And why is that?

Sigh. Here I am ruminating over the Thinker/Doer dichotomy (and using words like dichotomy, too) when I should be (1) planning my weekend meals and (2) compiling my grocery list so I can (3) get home and (4) cook food and (5) clean my house.

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*Yes, we own two dictionaries. When we married, we purged multiple copies of the same books, especially duplicate college textbooks, but we decided not to fight over whose dictionary to keep. Other issues are more important...like which of the double sinks do you want? and how will we squeeze our toothpaste tube now that we share one? and the ever-popular how much does it annoy you when I correct your grammar? Oh, the delights of being married to a Thinker.