Monday, March 19, 2007

Thoughts on Introversion

What I learned this weekend:

I am, officially, still an introvert.

Time alone is critical.

Specifically, having a day during the weekend that I spend mostly on my own terms is critical.

Otherwise, homework suffers, the game suffers, and mental health suffers.

Since Wednesday I've been feeling the "ragged edge" of exhaustion more or less constantly. It goes and comes, but I can always find it. I spent the entire day on Wednesday, 09:00 to 10:00, interacting with people, and I still haven't properly recovered. It's a different kind of tired from when I don't get enough sleep. I'm aware of my surroundings, and my mind works perfectly well. I just have a hard time processing people.

That's my basic definition for introversion. Being around people takes energy. Being alone recharges that energy. Extroverts, presumably, experience the opposite phenomena.

I'm not shy. (Found that out this weekend, too.) I like being around people, I like hanging out. But I need to spend time alone.

That puts me in the minority, in the United States. A strange minority. Invisible, but still discriminated against. Extroverts tend to have a very hard time understanding why someone wouldn't like being around people all the time. They tend to assume that it's because of fear, of shyness, that there's something wrong that needs to be fixed.

People in power are, generally, extroverts. Because being in power generally requires a lot of interaction with people, so extroverts are drawn to it.

Also: I'm going to need to keep my need for alone time in mind at college. Because--while I doubt it will be impossible to get--it will take action on my part to secure. Some kind of initiative.

1 comment:

  1. If you want to understand people, it helps to study their brains.

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