As all self-respecting introverts know, if you do a bunch of socialising, you need a recovery day. Or two. Maybe three.
If you aren’t an introvert, or aren’t close to any, that might seem a bit odd.
But I am one, deeply and to the core, and I can tell you, after I’ve cycled up the energy for peopling, and then socialised my face off, I’m an empty husk afterwards.
So today was a recovery day.
My lovely guests brought me chocolates, which were very much appreciated in my recovery stash (thank you!).
As well as scoffing all of those, I pretty much inhaled everything that looked even vaguely like snack-food, had a few (non-alcoholic) Mary Poppins’, and binge-watched The Umbrella Academy (it was really very good) while lying around on the couch and talking to nobody.
Tonight I will head to bed early, read for a while, and see how I feel tomorrow.
I will write about my night out in the next day or two… plus I have pictures to share, so stay tuned :)!
5 comments
I can completely relate to this! Peopling is exhausting for us introverts. Happy you got out though. Can’t wait to read about the evening.
Totally exhausting! Day two involves a short trip out, then watching movies :).
Ferns
I’m curious, how does being an introvert work with having your own web-site and being so generous in sharing what seems to be significant parts of yourself with the rest of the world? I’m very introverted and cannot see doing what you do on a regular basis (while at the same time, I very much appreciate what you give to the rest of us).
I hope you’ve been able to recharge after your bout of socializing.
That’s a good question. For me they are entirely separate and different things.
They come from different compartments in my ‘energy pool’ and they require vastly different types of energy in very different circumstances.
I have to be ‘in the mood’ to write (which is why ‘daily writing in Feburary’ is a challenge), but the energy required for this and for social media comes from a pool that doesn’t have to be particularly deep, and it’s entirely within my control. If I don’t feel like doing it at all, or once I’ve started, I run out of steam, I just… stop doing it, and nobody cares. So it takes much less energy, and I can 100% manage that expenditure.
Socialising, on the other hand, requires a sustained release of a lot more energy over time, so the pool has to be deep at the start to feed it. It’s both more energy overall and once I commit to socialising, the timeframe and type of energy expenditure is largely out of my control. That is, if I’ve committed to doing something social, I can’t engage for 5 minutes and then politely go ‘okay, I’m done now, gotta go, bye’ when I have nothing left in the tank.
It’s a strange thing, even to me. I might write a blog post about it :).
Ferns
The Umbrella Academy is good isn’t it? In a bat-shit insane kind of way. I’m really liking the willingness of Netflix, etc, to do things which aren’t aimed at the largest demographic possible.
I like your comment above about things coming from different pools of energy. I get that.
Writing a comment here or on Fet to a post is almost my work-thinking-brain which I can do casually and with a “I can just stop” feeling. Then there is the pool of energy for talking to people who I feel close with. That can include emails as if it’s someone I count as a friend then its not just a few hurried words, its an actual conversation in long form. I just cannot do that as a quick 5 minute start/stop thing, I need to give you all my focus even though you aren’t here, which means I need the energy to see it through and the free brain space from distractions. Then there is the social energy pool which can take the most to recover.
We are weird aren’t we? Thank god for those extroverts that understand us innies.