TheAgitator.com
Me too.
Saturday, February 22nd, 2003I’m with Gene Healy and Joanne McNeil — amen to the esteemed, wicked smart, and fantastically talented Jonathan Rauch’s essay on the social introvert. It’s me to a tee. I’m a social fellow. I enjoy drinks with the gang, banter, good conversation. But dammit if I don’t need a couple of hours every day to get my head in order. I would guess that most people who are drawn to writing also naturally crave solitude.
That’s why I’m stoked about my new digs. It’ll be just me and the pooch, now. When I want social, I’ll pick up the phone.
If that is, the D.C. weather will ever let me move into those digs. Was going to move last weekend. Blizzard. Was going to move today. Flood. Must move tomorrow. Weather man says to expect 45+ mph wind. What next? A plague of locusts?
I can relate to the need for solitude.
I find that I need that hour or so at lunchtime to just sit down by myself, and digest where the world’s at today. It recharges my batteries before I stick my head back in the high-tech meatgrinder.
From childhood, I was just as comfortable by myself as I was with other kids — and that has stayed with me into my 40’s. (They even commented about this on my report cards back then).
As for the next plague you face, better locusts than frogs — locusts crunch, frogs squish.
My favorite observation in Rauch’s article: “…extroverts have no idea the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves.”
Of course, you did mean you “and” the pooch…. didn’t you?
Good Luck, remember pack the stereo last.
I thought that Rauch’s line about how we introverts aren’t arrogant, we’re just smarter and more refined than introverts was classically understated–viz., it was classcially introverted humor.
Great find, btw.