Not A Blog™

I have to preface the preface with the following: this was supposed to be one entry. It turned out to be huge. Rather than edit it down (which would make for a better entry all around), I’ve decided to leave it intact and make this entire week based on this one theme.

Every so often, I look into something which I intend to shoot down but discover, instead, that said thing is more right than wrong. In the case I’m about to discuss, what I found was pretty enlightening for me. I don’t suppose I would say that it changed my life, but it certainly affects the way I look at the world. It’s also been a long time coming, as I discovered the pieces slowly over the past few months, but read the majority on it—100,000+ words—over the weekend.

Be aware that the ultimate point of this article is to explain how and why I am the way I am; a sort of self psycho-analysis, if you will. By writing this, I can point others to it and say, “that’s me” and hopefully, in some small way, not have to keep making up excuses for my actions which, frankly, is getting annoying.

In the meantime, let me say that I’ve read from others that doing this sort of thing is often seen as pointing out the nose on my face. That is, other people will read this and say, “yeah, we already knew that about you.” Be that as it may, I hope to go more in depth than you’d get just by hanging around me and/or reading what I wrote here. Besides, it’s more for me than it is for you. It’s therapeutic. Actually, I suppose it’s akin to coming out of the closet.

It started maybe nine months ago, when I read someone else’s blog entry on being introverted in an extroverted world. I identified with it immediately. In particular, the idea that introverts have to be alone while extroverts have to be with other people. This I had begun to notice without so much putting it into words, especially the fact that I always tried to come up with excuses to not hang out with people, even if I really did want to see them, which really bothered me. Turns out that introverts expend energy around others, while extroverts receive energy from being around others. This concept of undefined “energy” may sound new-agish and mystical, but it actually corresponds to very real processes in the brain which I’ll get to on Friday.

This revelation—and I don’t use the world lightly—was a huge deal to me, simply because it correctly explained so many things. Three-fourths of the people in our society are dominantly extroverted, although it’s important to note that the intro/extroverted scale is a continuum, not a binary selection. In fact, the mapping falls on the standard bell curve with the majority of people being considered ambiverts: that is, exhibiting relatively equal traits of both.

Still, extroverted-ness is extremely valued in our society, to the point where being introvered mirrors the notion of left-handedness as something to be fixed. We no longer think it appropriate to try and “fix” left handed people. We are starting to recognize this with introverted-ness, but we’re not there yet. It’s very much seen as a disorder, or at least a problem that should be worked on.

Case in point: one of the earliest memories I have is of me starting fourth grade in a new elementary school. After a few days, my dad asked how things were going and if I had made any friends yet. I hadn’t. Obviously something was wrong because my dad reprimanded me (although I now realize this was not the intent but at the time, I felt like I was in trouble). He said, “you should go around and introduce yourself to people and ask to be their friend.” I think I nodded some kind of response in the affirmative, but in my head I was saying “NO! I don’t want to do that!” I would have rather hid in the bathroom all day than asked someone I didn’t know if they’d be my friend. And I still feel this way. I do not make new friends quickly; I don’t want to, and I have no intention of ever doing it this way again, particularly now that my father is no longer overseeing my social life.

Some time after reading this initial post from a fellow introvert, I came across another theory of personality typing which I don’t remember. It broke personalities into four major groups and, while not completely without merit, it didn’t seem to line up right with myself, nor with people I knew. I remember thinking at the time that it wasn’t granular enough. The assumptions it made were to broad groups of people who don’t necessarily share traits.

What I did do with this information was file it away—for future use in the Not A Blog™. It was an incorrect construct and I was going to shoot it down so spectacularly, as is my wont.

That didn’t happen. What happened instead is that I stopped writing in my Not A Blog™ altogether as I ended up traveling more and generally just kept putting it off. That was the great Hiatus of Spring/Summer ‘06 which I hope has passed now. One of the ideas that I promised I had but had not yet posted was on this particular method of personality typing.

Fast forward a few months to last week. Need material. Check notes. Oh, yes, shoot down personality typing.

My intent was to do the same thing I’ve done when I wrote about that book which claimed that names determine personality, and any other time I’ve talked about blanket statements and their usage in astrological readings and other pseudoscience. So here we go with personalities: no doubt reliant on the Forer effect like everything else. Easy.

That’s what this post was going to be.

It didn’t work out that way.

[Continued on Wednesday…]