I feel like I am in a commercial. I am sitting on a deck in Hawaii, laptop on my lap, watching the palm trees sway in the wind and the waves crashing in the turquoise ocean. The only incongruous part of that last sentence is the laptop. I too am wondering why I am sitting here with my laptop when I am surrounded by all of this beauty. The best I can do to explain it is introversion.
People who don’t know me particularly well often mistake me for an extrovert. I can be sociable in groups and have taught myself how to be comfortable with public speaking. I am even able to sustain the illusion for days at a time. But, eventually the toll wears on me and I need to go withdraw into myself. There is a very large part of me that wants to be hiding in my room, curled up in my bed with my iPod on. But, one of the things that 20+ years in Portland has taught me is not to waste a sunny day. So here I am, out in public with a screen broadcasting loudly to everyone to leave me alone.
There has been some press lately on the values of introversion in a world that celebrates extroverts. As someone who spends time in both states, I feel that they are both valuable and have their place. As a business owner, I need my extroversion skills. I need to network and attend/speak at conferences and the like. I also need to be comfortable sitting alone (ok, not quite alone, I usually have a cat on my lap) and working on my laptop for days at a time. In my life, both states are equally valuable and both have their appropriate place and time.
Even though introversion is my natural state, I sometimes really enjoy getting to play extrovert. It is fun to get swept up in the energy of a crowd. When the dynamic is just right, I can, at times, quiet that nagging desire to be alone and feel like what it must be like to be an extrovert. My self-consciousness drops away and I feel like I am part of something greater than the sum of its parts. When that happens, I find the experience to be energizing rather than exhausting. And I bring that energy home with me and it can last for a day or two.
No matter how remarkable the experience is, I do eventually return to my natural state. And I generally crash. Hard. Like a sudden drop in blood sugar, my arms and legs feel leaden and my coping points drop to near zero. If I am lucky, I have the flexibility to take a long, restorative nap. Generally, that is all I need to regain my equilibrium and return to my introverted self. That is, until the next time I need to pretend to be an extrovert. Then the cycle starts all over again.
(Photo by David Kominsky)