illumination of the moment

For the longest time, I always sort of prided myself on being the perfect balance of introversion and extroversion. Because I hadn't ever experienced vast unhappiness due to too much or too little human interaction, I never quite knew what I was talking about when I said that "oh, yeah I mean I'm fine hanging out with a lot of people, but I also enjoy being alone" and hip hip hooray, I must be one of those lucky perfect people who are neither shy nor overly outgoing?

But in reality, being introverted or extroverted doesn't have much to do with how shy or how outgoing you are - the best way I've heard it described is that it's where you get your energy: either from others (extroverted) or from within yourself (introverted).

And I guess it's also appropriate to mention here that you also never truly know what you have until it's gone. Even though my family has moved more times than I can probably count with my two hands, I've been lucky enough to have a few good friends who have (because I suck at this, I give them all credit) kept in touch with me through phone calls and texts and facebook and whatnot. But there was a stretch of a few months when all seniors across America were crazy busy getting through college applications and 1st semester of senior year and I fell into my funk and everyone was just too busy, too busy to keep up with long-distance, let alone next door relationships. And it hit me. I am so extroverted.


Making this discovery, at least initially and in a small, tentative way, was sort of an independent activity but I only truly discovered it by talking with my sister. Talking "with" as opposed to "to" or even "at" because I'm usually more of a listener in many conversations. I like to let other people talk about what they want first (and more) - it's just more comfortable (and enjoyable, too) for me. But there are a few special people who sort of unleash the talker in me - my sister and eliz and vadaboy to name a few. With them, though I also do a fair share of listening too (at least for eliz and peter..sorry sissy), I find myself talking talking talking myself into clarifications of confusion things in life. And I've noticed that these crazy talk circles actually end up with a ding! illumination-of-the-moment moments where the world is un-confusing and stuff just makes sense. Like the discovery of my extrovertedness.