I'm part of a quite competitive family with many type A personalities. Being about the only type B in the family, I generally just putter around doing things for my own bemusement. Sounds like fun, huh? Well, not so fast. The catch is that while I'm doing my own thing for shits and kicks, my family is jealously monitoring anything I do to make sure that I never wind up doing anything that they can't do better. In my youth, I did "activity A" because it was kind of unique and fun and gave me a sense of identity because there's not many people around here who do this activity. X number of years later, most of my family does activity A and several of them have gone to great lengths to display their superiority at activity A. They'll do activity A when I'm present, but behave as though since I'm much inferior at it, there's no reason to include me in the proceedings.

There's another "activity B" that I did in my youth, and I started doing it again recently after many years of dormancy for a variety of reasons such as finances. I thought I could enjoy the rest of my years in peace and quiet doing activity B. When they caught wind of my renewal of activity B, suddenly they're talking about activity B like they're vets at it, and they're steering their children into activity B, so they can talk about how they're children are such geniuses at activity B.

There's more activities I could list but won't go into detail. It doesn't stop at activities though. I once showed my detailed personality profile to a family member, and they asked if they could borrow it for reading at their leisure. Since then, they quickly transformed into the same personality type except that they're still type A. Every conversation I've had with them since that day, they'll steer discussion toward topics that fit my personality and views, although they'll state these views much better than I ever could since they hold these views so passionately and with such originality.

Day to day, this isn't really an issue, since I've managed to live a distance from them. However, family get-togethers can be rather unpleasant and occur with more frequency than desired. They always have very outspoken, type A conversations regarding activities and views that originated with me, while I just vapidly stare in the background like a deaf mute. In sum, I'm just a leadoff batter awash in a sea of cleanup batters who want to show me how to really swing for the deep seats.