I know how he feels: Introvert - "“The world has caught up with us at last.” - Granite Grok

I know how he feels: Introvert – ““The world has caught up with us at last.”

Introverts UNITE

Or as Instapundit labeled it, “Springtime for Introverts“:

…“Introversion,” Cain wrote, “is now [considered] a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.” Her book was a catalog of the ways in which society is designed around the pleasures and benefits of the extroverted: open floor plans in the workplace, team-building exercises everywhere, office calendars that let the boss and co-workers track your every move. Our culture’s heroes on the screen or the athletic field are always extroverts, our weirdos and deviants invariably portrayed as introverts—that shy, retiring neighbor who always kept to himself until the cops got the idea to dig up his basement floor.

If Cain’s book, readable, clever, and popular as it is, was intended as a revolutionary manifesto, it largely failed. It is very difficult to coordinate an uprising of people who would rather not leave the house.

Heh! Believe it or not, I’m more of an introvert than an extrovert. No, not full scale either way but lately, I am more prone to “just leave me the heck alone, willya?” than full party mode. I’ve never been the life of said Party and to be blunt, I’ve always sucked at personal networking. Oh sure, I can appear to be extroverted when needed and there are times that I really do enjoy being with the small circle of friends that I have. If I bump into them if I have to leave the house, I do have a smile on my face. Ditto when I go to an event but even when I am there, if GraniteGrok is “working the event” (which generally means “get and keep the equipment WORKING!), it sometimes can get a bit dividing to concentrate on the work versus people (and I do hate being rude in saying “sorry, I gotta get this working…).

The article is rather short but the star(s) of the post are really back on the Instapundit in its comment section

Sidenote: which I always try to read because they are almost as informative and oft times, a whole lot more fun. Like these:

  • Heh heh. I just had a phone consult with my doctor today. She wanted to make sure I was interacting with people so I didn’t get depressed. “Are you kidding,” I said “This is great!”.  There was some confusion. Extroverts (and people somewhere in between) really don’t understand.
  • It’s not the introverts’ paradise that I hoped for. In some instances extroverts are requiring everyone to make extra efforts to socialize because they can’t handle being on their own.
  • The opposite is true for me. I’m going crazy because everybody’s always home, so I can never be alone.

My entire working life was one of almost constant interruption, one after another with phone call after call (well, when your mfg plant goes down and I’m the guy that supposed to fix the software part that’s gummed up…) and email after email. At times, trying to get the “head’s down” time to get things done in a block of contiguous time get really difficult and I times, I literally screamed “LEAVE ME ALONE” – alone in my room as I worked from home for almost 30 years (go figure – if you scream in the woods and there’s no one there to hear you…).  I still hate voice mail because it meant, back then, that I wasn’t keeping up. TMEW has learned to not ask me to get the vmail.

I thought that I’d be more in control of my time and be able to be left alone to get the stuff done I want to get done.  Sure, pluses and minus of being remote vs in the office, but I’d not have changed on that aspect. But things haven’t quite turned out the way I would have thought on the alone bit….sigh…

…4 year old Grandson. Especially as one of his favorite (and constant usage of) lines is “I really missed you”. Melt…this even if we’ve both been in the living room all day long. But I digress.

So for me, this time is just time as pretty much usual. I have gone, in the past, two, three weeks at a time never leaving the house. Not a big deal for me to not see others; I don’t crave crowds. Why?

Online community. My friends are all online and we can communicate at any time. But I digress again.

Introvert – I’m one, mostly.

You? Feel free to answer, separately, in your own comment.

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