I've always been excellent at music, and actually one of my best abilities is to play music by ear to influence listeners' emotions. It's a mix of thought and intuition to me, coupled with feeling responses I set up in myself when I play.
For a long time I leveraged this in a church atmosphere, where I would take familiar hymns (and later, very modern pop worship music) and rearrange it on the fly in ways that I thought would invoke a particular response. I always got a lot of feedback when I played, and people would attend the services I was playing it vs alternate services, just to hear me play.
I mention all that to counterpoint it against the other aspect of that role, which was leading worship. I wanted to be able to leverage my musical ability in terms of leading a group, because that seemed to provide the most opportunities, yet it's just something I'm not good at -- being a figurehead person who interacts with large crowds both verbally and musically, leading them. I just never really did well at that (I was adequate, but not great) because it was not suited for me temperamentally. The first skill I mentioned above was much more "me" -- no one else even had to be in the room, to be honest, it was just something I was totally in charge of, and I was following my own vision and intuitions, and allow others to observe/listen and be moved.
And my artistic pursuits all seem to be of similar bent -- me doing the work, although I'm decent at imagining how others might "plug into it" as the audience, and then tossing it out there and letting things fall as they may, rather than actively engaging and trying to extravert feeling and connection.
I've considered the possibility of moving into a therapeutic provision once I have the opportunity to do so. I've already accepted that I can't be what the NF therapists I've known are able to be. I'm pretty warm for a T type, but my strength is more just quietly listening, being able to empathize with their situation and see it as they might, and then ask pertinent questions or raise points that can reframe someone's dilemma so that they might feel positioned and empowered to make different choices. Any warmth I have is a supplement to that kind of "informative" process, rather than being the focal point.
The worst job I ever had was when I spent a year working as a journalist for a private tech mag for an ESFP. He dumped the journalist/writing chores on me, then expected me to approach the job as he would have. It was horrid. I was forced to meet and schmooze new people, network, be exciting and vivacious, right short punchy articles that didn't really properly analyze the tech in question, etc. And it demanded a high level of energy that I just did not possess, and to constantly be chasing people down.
I hated it. He talked to me once, eight months in, because I wasn't handling things the way he would have handled it; and then he fired me the day after Christmas unexpectedly without any more conversation. It was probably the worst experience of my professional career, but it did teach me something about what I didn't want to (and couldn't properly) do anymore, and what kind of boss I had to be wary of.
