fit of introvert pique

credit: Mystic Morning, deviantart.comFor the past two weeks, I'm been feeling this low-level petulance, just under the surface, at all times. On the verge of whining, if not periodically straight-up out-loud whining, if I'm being honest. This little low hum of discomfort, buzzing, buzzing. 

Leaving unwillingly on a walk this morning, a walk I would readily have skipped given the choice (but the paw bumping my right hand repeatedly made that impossible), gnashing and thrashing and not wanting to go, it suddenly hit me, BAM, what my problem is.

I am having an introvert freak-out.

In the true tradition of introverts, this isn't some big high-drama public meltdown.  It's this quiet, behind-the-scenes wanting to weep from frustration, from suddenly realizing that I want everyone to go away and stop talking.  Please, I'm begging you. I just need some down-time to recover myself.

I've been marveling, for these same past couple of weeks, at how unsettled I have been feeling. At how I am not in a routine that's comfortable. At how I haven't been writing.  

All that is down to not having enough required introvert restorative time.

Don't get me wrong: I love my new job.  But I didn't realize until this morning how hard it is for me to be working in a room shared with three other desks and colleagues.  I love the work and the information-sharing and cross-pollination and all that, but I realize now that it's also exhausting for someone like me, someone used to a door, to being able to close a door on everyone else's thought-processes and questions and phone conversations and be alone with my thoughts and my work.  I realize now that it kind of eats at me in this very visceral manner.  

Like I'm standing on an ever-shifting sand dune in the midst of a windstorm, trying to get my bearings repeatedly, trying to focus, to hold a solid center.

And the wind keeps blowing.

I know -- wah, wah, poor me. I have a dream job and dream friends and the perfect life, and still I'm sitting over here on my big ass complaining.  Whining. But not for long, so bear with me. 

Now that I get it -- that I remember that this need for quiet and solitude, a room of my own, is an inescapable existential drive for me, now I can fix it. Now I can insist on the boundaries I need, like OK, honey, if you get up before 5:30, can you please not come into the office, even if to ever so sweetly kiss me good morning, just go straight to your cereal and greet me at 6, so that I can preserve that precious hour and a half of early morning Only Me Time? There's not much I can do about the shared space at my job, but I'm prety certain that if I can just get my recharge first thing in the morning, at home, I should be fine everywhere else.

And the wind should die down a bit.

Or it'll keep raging but it won't bother me.  I'll be able to breathe and see and feel better and write, and feel solid ground under my feet.  Starting right now.

If you're interested in learning more about introversion, check out Susan Cain's fantastic book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking or my own blog about the book from about a year ago.