Introvert's necessary city essentials

If your introversion, like mine, is tied to being easily over-stimulated, I offer the following to help you make it through a day in the city.

Cities, of course, are loud places - loud for every sense. There are so many colors, people, sounds, smells - all of the senses can (and are) overwhelmed. You have to be careful crossing the street every block, vigilant about your belongings, sensitive to the intentions (good or bad) of those around you. And frankly, it's exhausting.

To shut out the noises (aural and otherwise) of the city, I turn to the following items. The goal is to make myself look as unapproachable as possible.

1) Black leather jacket. I prefer moto style, for a little edge and a lotta pockets.
2) The biggest over-ear headphones you can manage. The noise-cancel-ier, the better.
3) Enormous sunglasses. Think Jackie-Kennedy-avoiding-the-paparazzi big; the more of your face they take up, the better. Preferably reflective.

There are of course other things to make yourself safer: carry things in inside pockets rather than bags if possible, wear flat shoes (Doc Martens make good stomping boots, and protect you from every possible grossness), etc. But those three above items will see you far, if your goal is, like mine often is, to shut out the incessant stimulation of big city.

xo,
Devo

Positive affirmations for the anxious introvert in your life

aka, me.

xo, 

Devo

Citation note: The initial and penultimate pictures are mine. All sentiments except the penult came from the internet (original sources too obscure for me to find, though if you do, I'll be happy to add them). 

Waltzing

Just a short little post to say I had waltzing lessons this week. In front of many people. 

My significant other [1] has mentioned wanting to learn to dance many times, and so finally, I gave in. I asked one of our mutual friends, who happens to be a ballroom dancer, to teach us how to waltz. Nothing fancy, nothing groundbreaking, just your basic 1-2-3 waltz. 

So that's how we found ourselves one Thursday evening in the living room, sofas pushed against the wall, friends watching (and threatening to film us "for posterity," though that probably really meant "for the lolz on the internet"), tripping over each other's feet, and trying to count to three. 

After a bit, our friend declared it was time for a blindfold, so I could work on not looking at my feet and we could find out how good our sightless communication was. And bless their extroverted, people-loving heart, our dance instructor brought out the blindfold with a sort of apologetic-but-gleeful look of "How tricky this is going to be!" [2] And yes, I was apprehensive. Most of us are terribly reliant on our sight, and the thought of being without it, however briefly, is cause for discomfort.

But the blindfold? Was actually remarkably helpful. 

Remember that thing where I have trouble making eye contact? And that other thing about overstimulation? Being blindfolded cut all of that out. Much as I love J, making eye contact while trying to learn a new skill was challenging. Getting all the visual feedback from our friends sprinkled around the perimeter of the room was a lot to process. 

So for this introvert, dancing blindfolded was easier. All I had to do was count to 3, hold onto J, and not fall off my heels. 

xo, 
Devo


[1] I would have typed "SO," but I've watched too much Agents of Shield, and SO means "supervising officer."

[2] In my re-constructed, everybody comes out slightly British in their speech patterns. 

Leather jackets and eye contact

Had a impromptu 45 minute  conversation - introvert achievement unlocked! So here's the story.

I have this friend, K. (Yes, K of the long ago post about Enchantment.) K and I do know each other in real life, and have been friends for a remarkably long while now. So we have had face-to-face interactions in the past - but these days, most of our interaction occurs over the internet. We trade favorite pop-culture articles, book recommendations, complain about bad grammar, chat about White Collar. We both like snarky quotes and goofy Twitters (including "awful fantasy" and various language tweet bots). We borrow the other's books by leaving them in the stacks of the library and sending a call number via text. It's an easy-going, text-mediated friendship. And as two introverts, it works out pretty well.

But. BUT. This last week was different.

See, I had this leather jacket, meant to be passed on to somebody it would actually fit. K fit (eheh) the bill. The leave-the-book-in-the-stacks trick wasn't going to work here, though - a leather coat would be rather too conspicuous. So one random "I have a thing, do you want to try it?" text later, and K and I were meeting on the steps of the library for a coat trade.

And then proceeded to have a perfectly pleasant, unplanned, lengthy conversation, ranging on topics from church responsibilities to plans for movie-making. Several things helped these two introverts conversate, I think: 1) Outside - plenty of other things and people to look at, and 2) we were both wearing sunglasses, meaning that pesky social need for eye-contact was effectively negated.

I find making eye-contact when conversing extremely difficult. It takes so much energy and processing power to pay attention to faces that I lose track of a person's words. Faces often give too much information. If I focus, I can mostly look at people when they are talking to me, but it gets ten times more difficult when I am talking to them. How am I supposed to think and process your face at the same time? Badly, most of the time.

E and I have lengthy conversations where we never once look at each other, and have both noted how refreshing it is. I do try to look at people more, get myself up to an at least semi-acceptable extroverted level. But when I get really into something? And really want to think and discuss said something? I need all my brain to do it, and people faces and eyeballs get in the way.

So what's the take-away? Text-based friendship is a thing and sometimes introverts don't look you in the eyes. Don't take it personally.

xo,
Devo

People watching

"[R]esearchers have found that the brains of introverts respond to faces in a similar way that they respond to images of flowers" [1] 

So if one face is a flower, then a crowd is a veritable botanical garden. 

I'm not overfond of crowds [2]: loud crowds, giant crowds, crowds in enclosed spaces, people in crowds touching me, crowds that are more like mobs, with group mentality taking over and the feelings (good or bad) mounting to unreasonable heights. 

But large groups of people need not be "crowds", mobs chanting "Kill the beast!" and waving pitchforks. People en masse can be gardens, a delight to the senses, infinite variations on one beautiful theme. 

Which is to say, I like people-watching. 

People, on the whole, are fascinating. I love trying to puzzle out what somebody's story is just based on the type of shoes they're wearing and whether or not they're smiling. Is he in a hurry? Did she just get bad news? Why did she wear those shoes she can hardly walk in? What can possibly be in his backpack that's worth being bent double like a sapling in the wind? Why are they flying to Tokyo? Is their significant other in the military? the Peace Corps? Doctors without Borders?  A thousand human dramas, widely varied and yet still so much the same. 

Airports are prime spots for people-watching, trying to guess where people are going, who they're seeing, why they wore what they wore (be it pajamas and toting a pillow or high heels and a fur coat). Airports put people in-between, and it's utterly engrossing to see how individuals react when taken out of their routine, put in a more or less stressful situation, and forced to wait. Who watches the watchers? What books does he read? What game is she playing on her phone? Who does they text? Where does she sit? Such minutiae make up a life. Put all those lives together, and you have a flower garden of faces, a tapestry of stories, a forest of beautiful, messy humanity. 

xo, 
Devo


[1] Source of quote here; source of research here. 

[2] It's very telling to this introvert that the French word "crazy; insane" is fou/folle, and the word for "crowd" is foule...remarkably similar, methinks. 

Hell Mountains

Heyo, something I wrote recently (measured in months, instead of years). Inspired by the photograph next to #10 in this list.

Through the craggy paths of Hell you trudge; the dead, dry bones crunching under your feet, the wind sighing, and the dust of a thousand desiccated dreams swirling in agitated circles. And you think, “Just beyond that next ridge, just through this valley of shadow and despair, just a step into that looming black, and I will meet another traveling, human soul. It will no longer be only the long lost dead to keep me company, no longer only the mournful cries of the adrift and afraid, no longer this barren moonscape, haunted by lingering ghostly hopes whose the bodies have been gone for countless ages. Somewhere in that beyond, I will meet a real companion, instead of the hallucinations and the hauntings.”

You’ve lost track of how long the journey has been through these deserted Hell mountains. Monsters lurk in the creviced shadows, snarling at you as you pass by. Some are real, some are not, and you cannot decide which is worse: the Fury that bites and claws and gnashes, tearing the hair from your head, plucking out your eyelashes, stabbing at your arms and snapping on your ears until they bleed; or the softly whispering, nearly immaterial sylph who calls you ever onward towards a goal you cannot name and will never find, leaving you distraught when the next crag brings no end, just more mountains and more shadows.

This is no Dantean inferno; you have yet to run across another soul, tormented or otherwise. Occasionally a screaming, gnawing beast rages out of the caves or a slithering, crawlie beast oozes over the trail, but even they are few and far between. There are only remnants in Hell, only tatters of departed lives and hollow echoes of regrets. The air is thin and cracked, like a skull baked in the sun: worn and empty. Sometimes the mountains of bone slide away under your feet, and you are left staring up, enclosed by the silent dead.

The silence of the dead, with you for eternity. You, who wished for silence the way most people long for love – as a savior, an absolution, a bliss; who longed to be left alone, no longer bombarded by never-ending noise and needs – solitary stillness was your wish. Here on the peaks of Hell, you are finally alone.

And you weep.


Loosely influenced by Stephen Peck’s novella, Short Stay in Hell

xo,
Devo

Some poems

...I really want that title to be a palindrome or at least an anagram, and it's just not.

If [poem]

If anyone lived in a pretty how town –

What did he do? Where did he go?

What did he like? What did he know?

If in Xanadu Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decreed – 

How did he say it? And how did he feel?

How did Kublai Khan keep it real?

If we loved in a kingdom by the sea –

Where did we meet? Where did we play?

Where did we laugh? What did we say?

If I take the road less traveled –

What will I see?  Who will I meet?

Why in the world did I take to my feet?

If the world ends in fire –

How did it start? When will it end?

Why did we hate? What could have been? 

Sailing

Sailing on a sea that’s a hundred miles wide,

Searching for an island that’s a hundred miles small.

Looking for a mountain that’s a hundred miles high,

Climbing up a face as sheer as a wall.

Searching for a house on the hundred mile peak,

Hunting for its garden – that’s a hundred mile leap.

Spying for the birds with the blue-green beaks,

Getting lead to a river that’s a hundred miles deep.

Searching for your treasure in a hundred mile squall:

A small, red flower that’s hardly there at all.

Prom

too loud, too bright

thump of thousand feed to the beat

dresses glitter, sear

too aware, too intense

feel like hydrogen in the midst of fusion:

squeezed, terrified, out of control

too open, too vulnerable--

find a black hole and climb in,

run to the graveyard,

anything, just let me hide.

too close, too tight

suffocated by human spandex

claustrophobic

one false move and crushed by the mob

can'tfocuscan'tthinkcan'tbreathe

heart pounds

fight or flight –

trapped, no weapons

no protection

only one pink dress,

not nearly strong enough 

xo, 

Devo

PSA: Overstimulation

I went to a thing this weekend with a friend. The nature of the thing is immaterial, except to say that it was incredibly well-attended thing in the midst of a major metropolis[1]. 

We went, despite all that, because it was an important thing. One's dislike of crowds and traffic should not stop one from doing important things.

And there we were, in a small, hot room smushed tight enough together that if my personal bubble had been a spaceship perimeter field, the cabin would be lit up in pulsing red, alarms blaring, and a computerized voice saying, "Intruder alert, intruder alert, set condition 1 throughout the ship." 

Crowds, man. Crowds are not my jam. 

But hey, it was a thing my friend needed to be at, so I put my back to a wall and stuck it out. Until there was no more sticking. Because you see, I had reached my limit, and had taken all the stimulation I could stand. I'd had enough being hot, being close to people, listening to a drone-y voice about a topic that I wasn't terribly interested in. 

So I left. 

The great thing about being an adult, y'see, is getting to decide when you've had enough. Of whatever: cheese[2], drama, stimulation. Your enough-level is yours; it doesn't matter what other people think is right and normal. And if you're an introvert, dear reader, your enough-stimulation-level will often be much lower than that of your extrovert friends. And that's okay.

Pay attention to yourself, not just the pressures and voices that say you're weird or oversensitive. Your way of existing is valid and much more normal than you may realize. (We're introverts, after all, and not prone to talking about our internal existence.) To continue the metaphor from above, get to know the warning indicators on your spaceship. Mine is the I've-gotta-leave-right-now-or-I'm-going-to-throw-up feeling, a lovely combination of corporeal and mental freak-out. 

There are lesser warnings, that I (and you) can choose to ignore, depending on their severity and the importance of the thing. Doing difficult and out-of-the-comfort-zone things is healthy, expected, and needful. But not everything is meant to be endured. 

Sometimes, you just gotta say "Enough," and peace the heck out. 

xo, 
Devo


[1] Not *the* Metropolis, alas

[2] Nigh impossible

Introverting in Vegas

I dislike many things, including: crowds, loud noises, un-leavable situations, and being tired. Las Vegas is full of these things; heck, it is the Platonic Ideal Form of these things. And yet while in Vegas, I found myself strangely and unexpectedly having a blast.

I and a friend (let's call them[1] E– ) poodled our way there a while back, for to see a couple of the permanent Cirque shows, Kà[2] and O. They were amazing, almost rapturous.The music reverberated in your chest, shades of light told evocative stories, the heat of the flames toasted your face, and cool lights with dripping hoses made you feel like a mermaid or a shark. Cirque is everything I love: performance, story, acrobatics, music, near-miraculous technical feats, humor, beauty – soul-immersing and sense-saturating art.  I expected to delight in them.

What I did not expect to delight in was the rest of the Vegas experience.

And sure, maybe had we been there for longer – we stayed only two nights (I’m tellin’ ya straight, the only reason E— and I ever even considered Vegas is because we are both theater tech junkies to the bone, and it’s the only place in the entire world you can see those Cirque shows) – I would have burnt out, freaked out, peaced out. But for two days, Vegas was glorious. Mostly, it was gloriously itself.

Completely unintentional, but isn't it great that the sunlight is only hitting the flames on the torch?
Also, roller coaster in the background, because why not?

To say that Vegas is “itself” might seem weird, at first. After all, it’s the home of many replicated famous things: Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, Brooklyn Bridge, Elvis, Roman columns, animatronic Neptune, castles: the list is endless. Nevertheless, despite its replications, Las Vegas is its own outrageous whole, greater than the sum of its redundant parts.

It is a brash and over-the-top place, to be sure. There are acres of casinos (not even an exaggeration; the MGM alone has nearly 4 acres), miles of walkways and stairs, buildings that take up whole blocks. The MGM, where E—and I stayed, is the second largest hotel in the world, with more than 6,000 rooms[3]. Is it also lit up bright green at night with a giant gold lion out front, real subtle-like.

Shiny

The Strip is deceptively long; from our 8^th floor room, the sign for the Bellagio looked close. This was false. It was, in fact, almost a half an hour walk, once you included getting out of the MGM (not a calculation that comes up anywhere but Las Vegas, where the hotels are the size of small estates), down the strip, and back to the Bellagio, which is set away from the street by a massive set of stairs and two long moving walkways, and into the O theater.

A very, very long hallway

Which is all to say, Vegas has much much-ness. If you can paint realistic sky inside, do it. If you can put one restaurant in a hotel, why not twenty? If one television is good, a whole wall of them sounds like an excellent idea. Why buy only one “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” tchotchke when there are shotglasses, shirts, sunglasses, dice, purses, mirrors, and pens? As an introvert who dislikes too much stimulation, I thought this would horrify me. It didn't.

I like stuff (people, places, books) to be what it is (...er, are?). Facades – watching people or places struggle to be what they’re not – are exhausting and disheartening. Illusions will be shattered quickly enough; there are already enough dreams deferred, parades rained on,  hopes destroyed without adding pitiful self-delusion to the midst. As a person who gets tired of trying to understand what people actually mean instead of what they say, I love that Vegas isn’t putting up a front, shellacking itself with a veneer of cosmopolitanacity[4]. I expected Vegas to be trying for suave and sophisticated and to be failing miserably. 

Instead, Vegas embraces and loves itself, pop-up wedding chapels and all.

Never change

xo, 

Devo

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[1] Yes, yes; I'm using them  in the singular; those who care about such things feel free to have a snit. We all have those little things that annoy us. But I do present the following as evidence, for those who are swayed by things like the Oxford English Dictionary, which I imagine you might be if you’re bothered by singular-them in the first place: “They: In anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun of undetermined gender: he or she.” Note it doesn't say "colloquial" or "slang."

[2] Yes, the one where a performer died. But everything was running smoothly during our stay.

[3] All according to Wikipedia, the source of ultimate truth.

[4] What? The –ness noun-maker gets overused. And besides, -acity is reminiscent of “tenacity,” which is a great word.

Intro to Intro

We are each a special snowflake in the grand blizzard of humanity. This blog is my experience, and yours is bound to be (more or less) different.

That said,

Hi. Here I am. Here’s my blog. I’m going to write about stuff, including but not limited to introversion[1], books, theater, fashion, cooking.

Let's start with being an introvert.

My party line: Introversion is not a disease. It is not a failing or a pathology. It is not better or worse than extroversion. Introversion is a part of me, and I am a part of it, and that’s okay.

Introversion confuses people, both the extroverts and the introverts themselves. This is normal. The following is my stab at explaining:

The Life of I…ntroversion[2]

• Introverts like people. People are lovely. They are beautiful, unique confections that should be helped and cared for in this terrifying and harrowing journey of life. But much of the time, the people need to leave us in quiet. 
• Listening instead of talking
• Self-entertaining. Most time will be spent in our own minds.
• Thoughts. About everything. All the time. 
• Needing much less external validation than extroverted friends. 
• Parties are a bore. Small talk is the bane of our existence.
• Self-awareness, sometimes beyond the point of strict sanity.
• Telephone conversations fill us with dread. I have no idea why, I just know that I cannot stand to call delivery people. Thus, text-based communication is a gift from Heaven.
• To sit in solemn silence sounds pretty great, actually.

Key point, the above list does not make me unhappy; where my extroverted friends would feel silence a punishment, I see it as a relief.  I genuinely do not want to go to the party: it is not a question of shyness, or feeling left out, or aloofness – I simply do not have the energy. To quote Angel from his eponymous Whedon show, “This socializing thing is brutal.” 

I am not Boo Radley, hiding in the shadows, a recluse waiting to snatch your children and eat them in the night. Friends are awesome; I like mine quite a bit. 

People are great. 

It’s just sometimes, they need to go away. 

And that’s all. The need for solitude doesn't mean I love my people any less. In order to continue functioning like a human being, to continue working and taking care of the house and building meaningful relationships, I must have quiet.

This little interaction (again from Angel) pretty well sums up how I feel about life; like Angel, sometimes I just want to be alone in the dark. 

Angel: [T]o show my appreciation, I was thinking… that the three of us could, well, should, you know, maybe, go out –  you know, for fun.

Cordelia: Or we can go home.

Doyle: And you can sit in the dark alone.[3]

Angel: Gosh yes. Thank you.[4]

xo,

Devo

---

[1] The litmus test: After you’ve had a long, exhausting day, which do you prefer: 1) To talk with friends, unwind with pleasant chatter and togetherness or 2) Solitude? (1) is extroversion, (2) is introversion. 

[2] As you will soon learn, I cannot resist a pun.

[3] My preferred Fortress of Solitude is the bathtub. 

[4] What have I learned from writing this post? I am more like a soul-cursed Whedon vampire than I realized. Not sure how to feel about this. (Quote lightly edited)