Are You an Innie or an Exie?

Two blog posts in two days?! What is the world coming to?

My coworkers and I were having a discussion about introversion and extroversion the other day. It was prompted by this article, which was featured in The Atlantic in 2003. Oh gosh, I just realized that was eight years ago. Now I feel old.

Anyway...

In case you didn't read the article before moving past that link (it's really short, I promise), the basic idea is that introverts and extroverts are practically two different species: while extroverts get energy by being around people, introverts are drained by social situations and need time to recharge. On this count, I definitely agree with the author.

Almost all of my friends are extroverts, and while I love them all, I just...need a break every once in a while. Many of them cannot comprehend the fact that I actually enjoy being by myself. I'm not by myself because I don't have anyone to hang out with; I'm by myself because, after a day of interacting with my coworkers for eight straight hours, I don't have the energy or the desire to be around other people. All I want to do is sink into my chair and watch Netflix movies. Is that really so strange?

I loved almost everything in the article, but I did have a problem with one assertion: the idea that extroverts are easy for introverts to understand. Maybe the author meant that extroverts as people are easy to understand -- they often wear their hearts on their sleeves and are not shy about expressing themselves -- but I took it more as an assumption that extroversion as a concept isn't hard to figure out, which I do not agree with at all.

I just don't get it. How in the world can a person spend every waking moment with other people? I have friends who, during the summer, would just hop from group to group. The only time they would spend at their own houses would be the eight hours or so that they needed to sleep, and the only waking minutes they would spend by themselves was the time it took them to arrange another outing. I never understood how a person could do that, and I probably never will.

So, while I agree that extroverts will probably never understand introversion, it's also pretty hard for us introverts to wrap our heads around how you extroverts do what you do. Maybe we can all just make a pact to be a bit more understanding of one another. World peace and all that jazz. Because I'm certainly never going to change.