Steps of Deterioration

Hi folk! Today we're going to talk about What Happens to Me when My Social Fuel Tank is Running Dry, & How I React. I feel like it's getting more common to understand the basics of introversion/extroversion, how you get drained & how you recharge, but no one wants to talk about the messy bits. I know that I myself would want to read how various people of various types handle the stress of not being able to escape a situation that makes them want to pound the Red Alert button... So I'll start off!

The first thing I do is get even quieter than usual. Small talk? Pft. Volunteering information? Pft. My own opinions & preferences become less & less important as the self-preservation instincts kick in. Few things drain & discourage me as quickly as being ignored, interrupted, talked over, misunderstood, all of the hazards of letting words out of my face in public. Even on a good day. Let me concentrate on listening, instead.

Eye contact? That goes out of the window. Maybe if I'm not looking at you, you'll think I'm busy or boring or preoccupied or some sort of subconscious signal will go off warning you to seek interaction elsewhere... Sometimes I can still summon the energy to talk to you, as long as I don't have to look at you. I'm still listening. Probably.

In fact, not only am I not looking at you, I'm looking very hard at something else. I give my brain some comfortable busywork to distract it from the strain & chaos. By examining anything in sight. This is a thing that comes naturally to an extent at all times, but I fall into it as a lifeline when everything else going on gets to be too much. An example: hey look, there's a coffee table. Look at its height. Is that the most optimal height? That might depend on if it is mostly used for holding beverages, or resting feet, or even things like desk work. Which do I think this one is mostly used for? Look at the legs. Are they poking out? We wouldn't want anyone to trip on them. Are they designed to hold much weight? Could we sit on this coffee table? We should look at how thick the top is. Oh, & is it a material that would benefit from the use of coasters? Coasters are generally just a nuisance, & folk use them on surfaces that really don't require them at all. Silly people. Some coasters are really cool though! I have cool coasters! Hey, focus. Most coasters aren't even well designed. So when you're thinking about a coffee table, & you're thinking it should have coasters for beverages, you also need to think about what kind of coasters. Unless you like the look of coasters *&* beverage moisture marks. Would I use a coffee table in this space at all? Maybe an end table would be more suitable for this situation. Depending on its height & depth. Etc. At best, this actually teaches me about people & how they think. At worst, I end up just thinking whomever designed/uses the thing is an idiot & doesn't understand simple physics & organization & things.

Oh hey. I have like zero intuition. I have to rely on previous experience & such to try to figure out what people mean when their words don't quite make sense to me. & when my energies are drained... it's just not going to happen. I end up answering a lot of rhetorical questions, answering things in a waaaaay too literal manner, &/or just being entirely lost & confused. I can reach a point where even "how are you" seems like a super weird thing to say. HOW? WHAT DO YOU MEAN HOW. DOOOIIIIING. AM I EVEN DOING AT ALL? DO I WANT TO BE DOING? Moreover, a lot of people I know do a lot of jumping from topic to topic & back again with no warning. I can go all "wait what who?" & look like I'm not paying attention, even when I'm trying really hard. I might be spending my very last bit of focus & energy on someone, trying to show them the love that I feel, but nope I just come across as clueless.

You know what's awesome? Solid colors. Simple patterns. Wood grain. Tiles. Graph paper. God bless graph paper. Once even my reasoning skills are breaking down, I don't even want to look at anything that isn't deeply predictable. When I'm really starting to break down, to the point of I'm about to cry, the first thing I want is to see something super plain. It honestly helps. Things that have an appearance that is random, fuzzy, in any way unpredictable, just feel like more noise, more to figure out, more chaos. I can't turn off my brain's way of trying to make sense of everything I see.

After a while, I get super insecure. It happens any time I get tired, but especially if there's anything social going on. Here I am, at this thing that I decided was so important that I would ignore my own needs, & I'm staring at bookcases & knitting my brow at small talk. WHAT MUST PEOPLE THINK. It's a vicious cycle of putting effort into trying to connect with the people that I'm there to see, & then getting even more tired & stressed & bummed & insecure, & feeling like I need to try harder... I'll over-analyze evvvverrrrrrything. If anyone is nice to me, it's just because they're being polite. If they aren't nice, it's because I said/did something wrong. If they're ignoring me altogether, our friendship is ruined, I'll never hear from them again, & maybe they're better off that way. THAT THING I DID TEN YEARS AGO MIGHT EVEN BE TO BLAME. IT'S ALL SO CLEAR.

Related note: my husband is amazing. AMAZING. He lets me rely on him so much if he's there when I'm fading fast. He does small talk, he does intuition, he lets me cling to him & mumble nonsense & stare at his hoodie & try to position him as my representation to the world. He is an introvert like I am, but he's the exact opposite everything else as far as MBTI is concerned, & he definitely handles being drained a lot differently than I do. He's a lot better at faking, & at doing whatever needs to be done until it is no longer needed. <3 I do know a little bit about how he handles it & how to help him out if I'm the one less drained, so I can at least attempt to return the help he so often gives me.

How about you? What makes you your worst self, what does that look like, & how do you try to manage it?

Hello, 2015

THIS IS NOT A RESOLUTIONS POST.
I don't do New Year's resolutions. If I spot something in myself that could use improving, I get started right away. But I don't mind taking a moment after surviving the holiday rush to ponder what the last year has achieved & how I plan to approach the new.

In short, my plan for 2015 is to deepen & strengthen. The past, oh, three years or so have been about learning & stretching & sometimes just about getting through whatever huge challenge was at hand... I feel a need to allow myself to rest in the lessons learned, celebrate how far I've come, enjoy the new things as they have become more comfortable. There has been a lot of shuffling in my life situation, my understanding of myself & others, how I spend my time, how I contribute to the world around me, & what friendships I invest in in what ways. Even my interests & hobbies have shuffled. My opportunities have changed. My responsibilities have changed. Being a Young Adult Human takes a lot of reorienting! It's exhilarating & exhausting. So, now that there is a point at which I seem to see a chance to breathe before anything else major shifts, I'm going to take that chance.

Here are some of the Things I Do, Which I Plan to Keep Doing & Do Better.

-IGGPPC Staff Ninja. My position over at IGGPPC became official on January 6th, 2014! It's been a long crazy road & not really much at all like what I expected, but we've all done a lot of learning about each other & how to work together & stuff like that this year. While there were definitely times I thought about stepping down, I now can't really imagine my life without it. As long as they think what I can contribute is worth trying to deal with me, I'll be there. We're in the middle of reorienting tasks & responsibilities & whatnot, but once that gets sorted I forsee myself being very happy plugging away at my little duties.

-Retro Power. After getting to hang out with Alex in person for the first time after years of online acquaintance, we decided we wanted to work together to create a thing for 1MoreCastle.com. So far, it has coincided with a bunch of crazy life stuff thrown at both of us, so it's been a little rough going, but it's a thing worth fighting for until we both decide it isn't. The true point of it is the excuse to do something together, 'cause we're friends, & that will remain no matter how seriously we take RP. It is super cool though, you should check it out.

-Bass playin'. After months of communication hiccups, this is smoothing out nicely. I play with one of two of my church's worship teams, which means I play almost every over Sunday but not quite (sometimes the kids lead worship, or special stuff happens, or wires get crossed, etc). So I get up early, get use out of my 38-year-old bass I've had for almost 11 years, get in some practice working as part of a group, toughen my fingertips, & dream of when I'll be able to afford new strings. I really want to try flatwounds.

-Media Team. In theory, I've been on the church's newly-created "media team" for a few months or so. In actuality, the past months have been spent on site redesign, which is absolutely none of my business. Sooooo this will actually be more like a new thing than a continuing thing. The point is, I'm going to be helping out with the church's internet presence, doing stuff like keeping website content up to date. I want to be helping my church in more ways than just playing bass now & then, & I feel like having a way to do that that uses my particular skills & interests will also provide a benefit of helping people in the church learn just a little bit more about me & who I am. Because the simple fact of the matter is if you show up somewhere & aren't doing much, not much is going to be known about you & people will make their own assumptions. As a Young Woman Human, I feel like I've kind of been assumed into an "oh, maybe she should help with the nursery" type of vibe & other vibes that don't actually suit me AT ALL. So, with the Media Team label, maybe I can be planted solidly into a "she likes to sit at home alone & show her love for others by paying attention to details that no one wants to think about until they suddenly need them & they aren't there" vibe. I can dig that vibe.

-FRIENDSHIPS. I thought that 2014 was going to be for deepening new friendships, & kind of it was, but kind of it was also a lot about just sifting what ones should be the focus & how. So I've been doing some texting, some letter-writing, some google-hanging, some gif-exchanging, some pin-sending. I'm finding that there are people out there who express/appreciate friendship in the same ways that I do! WHICH IS AMAZING. I feel like I've spent SO MUCH OF MY LIFE trying to figure out how to show love to the people around me, & it feels SO GOOD to find people who are coming from a similar understanding so I don't have to work nearly as hard. People who see love in exchanging book recommendations, in expressing a pet peeve knowing the other person will absolutely not judge you, in watching something at the same time just to be sharing, in mailing little trinkets just to say you're thinking of someone, in deciding NOT to send something because you aren't sure they'd like it, in openly admitting to weaknesses & strengths, in asking questions to get another's perspective, in not really knowing what to say but letting that be okay, in sometimes maybe even saying the wrong things & letting that be okay too. I'm finding people who are loving me for whatever odd reason they have found, & I am letting them make me comfortable enough to make myself uncomfortable enough to grow. (That does make sense. Reread it until you get it.) One of the things I've wanted for so long was to find someone A LOT like myself. Instead, I've been blessed enough to find people who are different, but in the most beautiful ways possible. Ways that give us opportunity to see things in each other to inspire us in ways we wouldn't otherwise have. & that even gives me courage & refreshment, to keep on plugging away at finding out how to show love to the other friends I have & love so very much but get a bit confused on how they want that expressed. Because only surrounding yourself with the easiest & most comfortable people isn't good either.

-Blogging! Oh blog, you are such a nice resource. I appreciate the opportunities you offer. *pats technology on its collective head* Blogging is like... well, I embrace twitter because it is amazing for allowing me to express whatever I want to express & people can interact or not as they see fit. A blog is basically that with more space. ;-) Sometimes I even have occasion to link on twitter to something I've blogged, to provide handy elaboration in case of interest! Isn't that grand? I plan to take more advantage of this marvel. I already have many things in mind I wish to cover. I've almost fully drafted a couple in my mind already.

-More reading, more Bible studying, more letter writing, more discovering music/movies/shows, more knitting, more house-improving, more loving, more giving, more listening, more cookie-baking! MORE YOU. <3