If you're like me, you need a certain amount of time alone each day, or you start to feel tired and irritable.
You have a "zone" you think of it as a place, or a different state of being and you like to hang out there on a regular basis, contemplating stuff life, politics, vMemes, that bird hopping around in the snow.
You welcome one-on-one conversations, and oddly enough you're also a natural at teaching classes or giving presentations, but you run into problems in that crucial middle ground, the group situation. One person is good. Two is feasible. Fifty are an audience. It's the in-between that causes you stress.
Sure, you've learned how to manage as a reticent type, you're in a position to study those extroverts carefully and may even be able to pass for a vibrant, gregarious fella (or gal). But it feels like a performance, and you require lengthy intervals of recuperation.
All this probably means, Jonathan Rauch tells us in next month's Atlantic, that you're an introvert. And science has found your brain processes information differently, so you aren't being arrogant, misanthropic or selfish when you plead for the extroverts in your life to give you some peace and solitude.
Unfortunately, public life -- business, politics -- is dominated by extroverts. This seems a bit circular, no? As does much of the discussion. It appears that society, an entity based on social interaction, prefers the sociable. Well, duh.
Still, I found the article interesting food for contemplation. Which, as an introvert (an INFP, to boot) is what I love best.
12:07:47 PM 
|
|
