It started with an intention. My partner was going to be out of town for two weeks, and I saw this as an opportunity to do a few more things out of the house that I normally didn’t have the social energy to do. Somehow I turned my do-a-few-extra-activities into “wouldn’t it be interesting if I did an experiment by bringing out my extroverted side and doing something that involved other people each day for the next two weeks.” What can I say, I like to make things complicated for myself.
It was important to me that I didn’t view the people I met or the events I attended as objects in an experiment. Because of this I didn’t see any individual friends during the past two weeks and only went to events I would have either normally gone to, would have normally considered going to, or were on my list of things to do “someday.” I ended up shoving a lot of somedays into the span of two weeks. (If I met you during the past two weeks and you feel weirded out by this whole thing, please email me.)
Here’s an account of what I did each day (edited afterwards into sentences that more or less make sense), with a rating of how I felt each day.
1=can’t keep eyes open
10=just drank a bunch of coffee!
January 30:
10am – Pretty tired. Haven’t slept very well over the past few days. Not the best start to this project. 4/10
9pm – I’m back from a 2 hour business Meetup. I participated in the discussion and asked some questions. I had felt a little better during the day, and was doing ok at the Meetup, but once I left the Meetup my energy deteriorated. 3/10
December 1:
10am – Ya, not much energy again. Slept in a little. 5/10
9pm – Got back from an hour and a half community meeting. It was a rather large event, didn’t speak to anyone, though I had intended to, but no-one around me seemed interested in talking. I really didn’t want to leave the house, but once I got outside into the cold night I was feeling better. At first I thought stepping into the cold might have pepped me up, but I was outside in the cold for 5 minutes last night. 7/10
Deceber 2:
10am – Pretty tired. Again. 5/10
9pm – Doing ok. In the late morning I went to a knitting circle. I used to go to it frequently, about 8 years ago, and now only go to it every six months or so. I used to enjoy knitting, I should put it on my energy revivers list. 7/10
December 3:
10am – Woke up with a decent amount of energy. 7/10
9pm – Went to a business type meetup at noon. Lots of discussion and helpful advice. Right now physically a 7/10. Mentally maybe a 3/10. Can’t really think, so I’m watching shows on Netflix.
December 4:
10am – Watched 6 episodes of Broadchurch on Netflix until after midnight yesterday. Had trouble sleeping again. Woke up around the same time, 7am ish, and feel surprisingly ok. 6/10 maybe. Doing a lot of sighing this morning though. Why am I doing this project? It doesn’t feel like I’ve exerted myself so far, but it’s the idea of leaving the house for another week plus that’s starting to get to me.
9pm. I spent two hours at a coworking space. It was a free day there. Got a fair amount of work done but there was quite a bit of distractions. Had a ten minute chat with the extroverted owner when I was heading towards the door, turns out we might be able to help each other out. The next time a person stops me to chat while I’m walking towards a door I’d like to try harder to stay present and focused on them, as my eyes kept darting towards the door. Was tired when I got back home, so I spent an hour and a half finishing the Broadchurch series on Netflix. Felt decent enough to get back to work after watching the show and then wrote my Icebreaker speech for Wednesday’s Toastmasters. Physically I was pretty tired. But, I was apparently alert enough to write what I think is an interesting 4 minute speech. It’s Netflix again for the rest of the evening. 5/10
December 5th:
Forgot to write anything this morning.
10pm – I had planned on going to a Doctor Who Christmas Show viewing Meetup thing. It was cohosted by a cosplay group. About twenty minutes before I had to leave I was looking at the Meetup description and just freaked out. Most of the people there would probably be cosplayers. I don’t do cosplay. I don’t do cosplay so much that I have no clue if “cosplayers” is the correct term. And judging by the avatars of the other people who were signed up, I guessed I was going to be 15 years older than most of the other people there. And the event was over three hours long. Noooooo. I didn’t end up going. Next week I’ll use my Why Log (a log to remind me why I wanted to attend an event in the first place so I’m less likely to cancel plans). You know, practice what I preach. I was about to just stay inside all evening, but I remembered the car still wasn’t in the garage. It wasn’t too late to go “do” something, preferably low stress, and I realized that I could go read somewhere. Jenny Lawson is doing her book signing tomorrow in my city, so I figured I’d go somewhere and read her book. Except apparently I hadn’t bought her book, even though I was 95% certain I had preordered it. So, I decided to go buy it and then read it at the coffee shop attached to the bookstore. Fine. The plan sounded fine. I get in the car, drove to the bookstore, found the book, bought the book, walked over to the coffee shop and … it was closed. For remodeling. I stepped outside, took out my phone, and checked Yelp for other coffee shops to go to. Suddenly, outside, in the cold, with people passing me by as I clutched the internet and its knowledge in my hands, I got lonely. I felt empty. It had been a long time since I had felt like this, perhaps since my move to England a number of years ago (I’ve since moved back to the US). Going to the coffee shop seemed like a hollow move, something almost desperate, and I don’t like being desperate. I went anyway. While I was there, nursing my camomile tea and reading Jenny’s honest and funny book about depression and mental illness, I felt a little better. 7/10
December 6:
Noon – Spent the morning reading, and did a little meditation. Cleaned a little. I hadn’t consciously realized how much clutter I had let build up over the past week. I wonder if that was causing mental clutter as well. I feel a lot better now than when I woke up. 6/10
9pm – This was one of the events I would have gone to even if I hadn’t decided to do an activity each day. This afternoon I went to see Jenny Lawson do a reading from her new book. It was a nice and funny and heartwarming reading. The store’s nook was filled, overflowing actually, with people. It was a little bit claustrophobic.
The wait to get my book signed was not nice or funny or heartwarming. About 10 minutes into the wait the boredom and glaring lights started getting to me, and the nervousness of what to say started to set in. After the reading, and before she started signing, Jenny had mentioned that her own anxiety once prevented her from getting a book signed by David Sedaris, and for anyone who was too nervous, they could leave their book with the bookstore to get it signed and pick up the book tomorrow. I nearly took her up on the offer. Several times I really wanted to leave. I got nervous and fidgety and bored. But, I stayed the hour or so to get the book signed. When it was my turn I said Hi and told her that I liked her anecdote about the gifts that saying No to something could bring (more on that story in another blog post), and that I had a website for introverts.
When I got back home I ate dinner, and then checked Facebook. I started messaging with a friend who said her house had caught on fire a few days before and was uninhabitable. That was of course terrible news. After that conversation I really only had enough energy to mindlessly scroll through Facebook and comment on a few things. 4/10
December 7:
10am – Really wanted to go back to sleep this morning. This hasn’t actually happened very often this week, which is abnormal for me. Typically my partner’s alarm goes off, which wakes me up, and then I go back to sleep for a half hour or so. This week I’ve stayed awake after the alarm has gone off, but stayed in bed because I haven’t wanted to get up and walk around in the cold. But I got up anyway. Did some mediation. And it turns out I’m feeling pretty productive this morning. Maybe I need to normally just get up and do some meditation?? 8/10
9pm – Doing ok. A lot less tired than I expected. I would be tempted to get less sleep than normal tomorrow too, except that I’m going to a large networking event tomorrow which I’m expecting will zap all of my energy, so I don’t want to risk having a meltdown by intentionally not getting enough sleep. I’ve also realized that I should probably use this next week to reacclimatize myself to my “normal” going to sleep & waking up hours, but I think it might be best to start that Wednesday night, after I go to Toastmasters. Went to a small mastermind/networking thing at noon today. Out of the 6 other people there, two were introverts. We’re out there, guys. 6/10
December 8:
10am – I have a big networking event this evening, so I’m taking a long lunch break today, and will be watching some Netflix, knitting, and reading. I’m also planning on getting there a little early so I can sit in the car for a bit to calm down and meditate (the event is at 6, which means I’ll be driving during rush hour, which is often stressful). 5/10
10pm – Went to a big Networking (not sure why I capitalized that) event tonight. There were at least 100 people there. I wanted to get there early, but that didn’t happen. I knew, from past experience, that if I’m stressed I should take a few moments to relax before I go into a place that’s noisy. So that’s exactly what I did. I parked, and then sat with my eyes closed for a minute or two, and relaxed. Was not as nervous going into the event as I thought, and most of my nervousness went away after the first 5 minutes when the first person I met was pretty strange and was gathering business cards by having people fill out a form and telling them he’d grant them three wishes. Wonder if he thought I was strange too. The event went fine. As expected there were quite a few introverts, I would say 1/5 of the people I talked to told me they were introverts?
I knew the event would zap my energy, and it did! I was pretty brain dead when I got home. My garage doesn’t have an electric opener (I’m pretty sure there’s a special word for this, but I’m not going to bother to remember what it is right now), so I have to get out and open the garage when I come back home. Tonight I pulled up, and turned the car off, and then got out to open the garage. Not usually how I do things.
Earlier in the day I made sure I got a long lunch. I took an afternoon shower that was surprisingly refreshing. I finally realized that I shouldn’t watch Broadchurch as a way to unwind because it’s an emotionally charged show, I had just figured it was a good time to watch it because my partner is out out town and wasn’t interested in seeing it. Convenience not being the best way to choose things is something that I’ve been learning this past year (I suspect that sentence didn’t make any sense, but I don’t care…). So during lunchtime I watched an episode of The IT crowd instead, and read, and meditated. The meditation helped a lot, as I was starting to get nervous, but I calmed down a lot, and stayed mostly calm for the rest of the day, despite the networking event being so loud that I was basically yelling. 3/10
December 10:
10am – Totally forgot to write something yesterday. I’m getting more and more distracted by and from everything. I did my first Toastmasters speech yesterday. Surprisingly I wasn’t nervous… until 10 minutes before I gave my speech! It went well enough. My voice shook, but that was expected. I still ended up being a lot less nervous than I had been on previous occasions when I did one of the Toastmaster roles (“Ah counter,” “Grammarian,” etc). I think t’s just a matter of practicing.
This morning I woke up super early (for me) to get to a Networking (again with the capitalization) Meetup. You should see the dark circles under my eyes. Just kidding, you shouldn’t. Anyway, turns out the networking Meetup was actually a referral group which isn’t really something I’m interested in right now. Oh well. Felt out of place. Though I did briefly meet someone in person who I’ve previously met online, so that was interesting. 4/10
9pm – Went to another networking event tonight. Saw four people I recognized there. Three of the them I had met for the first time these past two weeks, the fourth was from a Meetup thing I went to last month. I guess there’s a small circle of people who go to a lot of Meetup events? Had some interesting conversations with interesting people. I’ve decided that I like networking events. Not enough to go to them that regularly, but maybe monthly or quarterly. 5/10
December 11:
10am – Can’t concentrate this morning. 4/10
9pm – Couldn’t concentrate all day. Had to use a timer to get any work done (timer gets set to 45 minutes and during that time I could only work on one task. Din’t always go as planned).
I almost didn’t leave the house. Today’s event was going to see the inner workings of a cool forty year old sculpture downtown that used to have lights and sounds. I almost didn’t go because trying to deal with parking and rush hour traffic seemed like the worst idea ever. I finally decided that I would take public transportation and just chill out and knit instead of drive and curse humanity. The next time I want to go to something downtown I should look up the parking situation, or the public transportation options, while I’m deciding whether to go. 6/10
Here’s the wires from the sculpture:
December 12:
Forgot to write again.
9pm – Went to a very interesting workshop about storytelling. Had considered staying and talking to the teacher afterwards, but ended up deciding to email instead and went home. 6/10
December 13:
11am: Got back from doing Tai Chi in the park. Let’s just pretend this was an extroverted activity, shall we? I liked doing Tai Chi and I’ll probably come back and do it again. A few participants started talking to each other afterwards, but I’ve had enough chit chat to last me a while. 6/10
I did a video in the evening, as evidence that I didn’t have a mental breakdown:
What do you think of my project? Will you be trying something similar?
