Dig if you will a picture…
We’re at a dinner party. It’s cocktail hour, everyone is dressed to the nines, people are getting drinks, mingling. The room is packed and every where you look it’s a seemingly endless sea of faces. The room hums with the chatter of several simultaneous conversations. There are familiar faces, but a lot of faces I don’t know as well. You? You dive right in. You look for friends, you look for new faces. You jump into a conversation, hand extended to greet someone with a firm handshake and a “Hi, my name is…”
Me? At this point? I’m OVERWHELMED.
And I love people and I love being social but time and time again, I find that events like this leave me wanting to find the nearest wall to hold up, to let people come say hello to ME, and sometimes I leave wondering if maybe I couldn’t have tried to be more social.
I’m an introvert.
Not like that was any surprise to me. I mean, I’ve known that, but recently I picked up Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
, a book by Susan Cain that not only explores what introversion is but explains lots of other stuff – that made me feel like Ohhhh, THAT explains why I react like X when Y happens.
Being an introvert doesn’t mean that I’m an antisocial hermit – quite the contrary – I really enjoy when I’m able to go out with friends and connect and talk and socialize. Yeah, I will enjoy myself more if I’m sitting down with one or two peeps and digging in depth and connecting and talking about life than having surface conversations with dozens of people at an event. Does that mean I avoid events? No. But I’m not a social butterfly. I’m probably kind of sort of a little overwhelmed. I probably will leave feeling like I should have talked to more people.
But that’s okay.
Being an introvert also (obviously) explains why working at home was such a fantastic fit for me. I remember when I started working from home six plus years ago, my boss being concerned – some people need to be in an office, they need to have people near by to bounce ideas off of, they need that water cooler talk. Well, to some degree, I do as well… but… I work pretty well without it. In fact, getting to work in my own little world is how I thrive – and I’ve had to adjust to being back in an office again.
“Quiet” addresses finding restorative niches – basically ways to catch your breath during your day. For people who need to shut the world out sometimes, offices can be overwhelming. I love the people in my department, but I find that making sure I get outside for a walk by myself during my lunch hour kind of restores a bit of centeredness (shut up, it is SO a word) I need to get through my day.
Being an introvert or an extrovert – neither is a disease or something that needs to be fixed – they’re just traits, part of who you are. And if you, like me, pick up that book it’s not because you don’t know whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert and you want to find out — it’s probably because you already know. And I really figured “what can this book tell me about myself that I don’t already know?” but I was kind of pleasantly surprised with it.
About sarah
Some days I wish I were an introvert instead of the verbal spaz I am. I think it would save me buckefulls of regret. (And if I can say Buckefulls you can say Centerdness)