Ne vs Ni
I've been wondering lately if my Ni's even stronger than I thought... enough for me to question my type, which I assure you is not a common thing for me to do.
When I was in my early teens (I think, could've been earlier), I did one of those IQ tests that broke down intelligence into different regions and had different tests for each of them (memory, reading comprehension and whatnot, forgot the details). The test that I did the best in (full marks) involved the shrink choosing 2 objects and me telling her what they had in common. For example, what do a sword and a lake have in common? Well, they both reflect light (that was my answer anyway).
I have always been very good at this. Heck, I force myself to do this all the time as a mental exercise. It's true that Ne makes connections, but I don't think this is the type of connections they mean. It's not like I saw a lake and went "oooooh shiny, oh I know, swords are shiny too!". Don't get me wrong, I do that a lot too, but this seems to be pattern recognition, something that is key in Ni. This seems to be Ni to me, at least functionally.
I also seem to use Ni a lot more than Ne in my hobbies. I have very few spontaneous, creative activities that Ne users would strive on. I've been looking for a creative outlet for ages, but truth be told, I always just end up playing video games or something, rather than trying something creative. I say it's important to me, but it always seems to get out-prioritised.
Most of you don't know this, but I am a successful, competitive pokemon player (there's a point to this, I swear). What made me successful was my conceptual ability. I'm very good at sitting down and analysing the game, looking for 'the key to winning', finding the core concepts of the game and forcing a victory. This to me isn't Ne at all. I know a lot of Ne dom players who find lots of new possibilities and strive off them. I however, really don't do that at all. It seems to me that I approach the game in an Ni sort of way and Ne is just secondary, used when I need ways to take advantage of my theoretical observations.
Maybe I'm just confusing the 2 functions again. Do I have these functions right?