Accidentally in Code

Tag: introvert

  • Being an Ambivert

    Being an Ambivert

    Rainbow girl
    Credit: Flickr / Mizrak

    I fall right in the middle of introversion-extraversion, so whilst some seek out solitude, and others seek out constant stimulation I swing between them. Introverts find my social circle overwhelming, extroverts my love of living alone bizarre. And so I’ll organise social events, be the centre of attention, and take a long vacation solo. And all of these things make me happy, although finding the balance between them can be a challenge. 10 days alone in Bali, and I got pretty weird at times. The social demands of a two week work trip left me dreaming of increasingly dramatic ways to be alone. Run away to Dublin to see an art exhibition! Take an impromptu ski trip solo!

    The hardest part is the transition between – too much time alone, and I start to love it top much, in theory I want to speak to another human being again but it starts to seem like hard work, scary. Too much time with people, and I am desperate to be by myself, but somehow also afraid of it – maybe that is why the more desperate I am for some Cate-time, the more that becomes part of a fantasy that involves leaving the country.

    Too much social time makes me jittery, and then I go back to the norm, try to settle down to code, or write, and have a hard time focusing. I want a couple of hours, ideally a day, if I’m really social-ed out, to get comfortable with it again. I’ll read a book, go to the gym. I remember a weekend with an introvert boyfriend, and we separated for a while one evening – a late brunch and chilling out extended through the afternoon, and then we had plans in the evening. He was happy to get an hour to himself. To me that was so stressful, figuring out how to be alone and then having to be around someone again before I had relaxed into it.

    The easiest way to upset me is to flake on me, much of which relates to my feelings about how time is so precious to me. But I’ve noticed, when people flake and I’m in introvert mode I don’t care as much. It’s much more stressful to me when I’m in extrovert mode, maybe because of this challenge with transitioning between them.

    I think related to this, for all there are many people who I really like and happy to spend time with, I don’t feel like I have the time or inclination for people I have nothing in common with, or don’t really like. I love being with people I love, but I also love being alone, so there is no need to spend time with people for the sake of it. Often I just don’t engage in conflict, because I think it’s inefficient. I suck at small talk, a cursory interest in current affairs, or media might help me there, but I don’t bother.

    One thing that I’ve observed, is the more social my work-life, the less social my personal one. These ebb and flow, and normally I can mostly stay within some range of balance. An evening during the week, just for me. A day at the weekend. A long walk. An entire novel.

  • My Secret Life as an Introvert

    hiding
    Credit: flickr / PoliCardo

    My friend Maggie tells me I’m an introvert. Not because I’m shy, or because large groups make me nervous, but because I don’t get my energy from being around people. I was surprised by this, because I guess I’ve always considered myself to be extroverted and so I asked another close friend and he said that was nonsense because I’m happy to be the center of attention and the life of a party.

    It doesn’t really matter which of them is right – introvert, extrovert – it’s is just a label. Thinking about it, I’ve decided that I need to be both. Too much time alone makes me angsty, but I don’t think someone who was truly an extrovert would love living alone as much as I do.

    When my life is very social, though, I do get to these points where I desperately need to be alone. Too much stuff going on, too many people makes me stressed. When I get to about a week without any “Cate-time” I will literally block off time in my calendar to make sure I get it. I got to that point last week.

    Perhaps it’s not really about introvert vs. extrovert. Perhaps the real problem I’m having, is being a maker living on a manager schedule. Hour by hour blocks and lots of meetings and jamming about pitches and posters might be manageable, but then my personal life is on manager-time as well… and it’s too much. It means that I get to the point where it’s mid-afternoon on a day when we’ve spent all that day working on our pitch and I feel strongly that if I have about half an hour before I’m going to crack from too many people, too much talking. From the article linked above (emphasis mine):

    I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

    My whole team was overloaded like this, and so we called it quits and I escaped and – bliss – had a whole evening of maker time, which I spent coding. It’s interesting that most of the technical people find the pitching stressful.

    I would have thought I would be OK, since I do a fair amount of public speaking. However,  there are two things that make giving talks by myself different:

    1. It’s one aspect of what I do where I do my best at the time and try and improve for next time, sure, but good enough is fine. Because I won’t teach that exact same class again any time soon, or give that same talk.
    2. The talks I give alone are either are made in maker time – in fact, require maker time to create because it’s all about connecting the dots and inspiring.

    In what we’re working on, we give the same pitch nearly every day. Each time we have something new to work on. We have thrown out my section and started over on it more times that I can count. It’s exhausting. The idea might need maker time, but the pitching and the discussions and the hammering away at it until it shines – that’s manager time.

    So I’m going to make a conscious decision that as my work-schedule moves to manager-time, I’m going to shift my personal life to maker-time. It satisfies my need to be alone, and my need for unstructured time in which to create. Coding distracts me from the stress of pitch-pitch-pitch.

    Strange that the final stretch and living on manager-time is the biggest stress I have. But good to know.

    How about you? Do you live on maker-time or manager-time? How do you cope when you’re on the wrong one?