I would bet a significant sum of cash that people who know me, even some fairly close to me, believe that I am an extrovert of the first order.
I think it is hard to earn the nickname “Mean Patti” by being shy and hesitant to speak up.
My clients’ employees remark that I am friendly, outgoing, willing to share.
Sometimes I overshare. I will confess to them when delivering safety training about my one work-related injury. At a Superfund site at 4:30 in the morning to calibrate air monitoring equipment, I placed my foot sideways between a platform and a job trailer. I sunk on my leg, scraping and bruising it badly on both sides to the knee, trapped there in the early morning darkness dark, alone, while the equipment beeped and blinked and begged to be zeroed, struggling to free myself. And I confess that I was too embarrassed to report it to anyone.
If the topic comes up and I think it is relevant to the discussion, I will tell them my mother died in a car accident, killed by someone who was likely a drunk driver.
I am not particularly private. I’m sharing with you, right here, right now, things that I might not tell you in person.
I am not shy. My husband has said, in what I am sure was meant to be a compliment, that my voice carries.
Putting myself out there has never been outside my nature.
Speaking in front of crowds is as natural to me as breathing. I enjoy it, as long as it is not about me. I’ve emceed the AERC National Awards Banquet — it’s so important to me to make it fun and entertaining and special to those winning awards and those there to cheer them on.
But my bridal showers? Torture.
I have lots of friends, and tons of acquaintances. I don’t hide from them, I enjoy their company. I say hello to strangers; I chat with supermarket cashiers.
When my husband, sweetheart that he is, threw me a surprise 40th birthday party with about 40 friends and family? I was equally grateful and wishing desperately to not be noticed.
My sister recently lent me a book called Quiet by Susan Kain. We spoke about it. What was the difference between an introvert and an extrovert anyway?
I’d heard a definition once that made sense to me. You’re an introvert if you re-charge your batteries by solitude; you’re an extrovert if you re-charge them by being around people. (Introvert. Guilty as charged.)
Beth summarized it succinctly. You are an introvert if you go to a party, enjoy yourself, laugh and meet people and behave in a social way, but by 10 p.m. you glance at your watch and fantasize about your bed, a good book and the joy of solitude. If you’re there as the party winds down wondering where the after-party will be, you are an extrovert.
I can’t usually make it until 9 p.m.
Here’s the quiz from the author of Quiet: http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/quiet-quiz-are-you-an-introvert/
What my friends, my clients and family don’t know about me, I think, is that being “up” and out there leaves me with a need to cocoon myself to recover. Training all day out of town leaves me quietly in my hotel room, only up for dinner out with my closest girlfriends, just one or two, with whom I can entirely decompress.
Today I was at Wegman’s by 6:30 a.m. to do my holiday shopping. It was a ghost town; I was in heaven.
Hustle, bustle, and crowds? Never. I went to the Toronto Winter Fair a few years ago and I will never do that again. I took my nieces to the Erie County Fair when they were little, at exactly the time the gates opened. We went through the barns and the exhibits and by the time the Midway was filling with people, they’d had a fried dough, won a goldfish and we were heading for the car to go home.
When preparing for a 100 mile ride, I was so surprised by all of the riders afraid to ride in the dark alone, or just alone in general. This introversion thing explains that. I’ve never felt alone with my horse; I welcome that time. There is a very small handful of people with whom I like to ride all day, and you know who you are. If you’re chatty on a horse, it’s likely not you. I may love you dearly, but I need that solitude to focus, to maintain my energy level for the long ride, to be still and enjoy each moment. No wonder I love the 100s so very much. If you plan it right, and ride slowly, you can spend almost 24 hours mostly alone with your equine partner.
I plan my client schedule around my introversion. I happily put it out there, train and consult and take charge and enjoy it. But too many days away, too much of it, and I need to schedule down time close to home, nesting. Don’t call me to come to a party when I’m in nesting mode; I just won’t have it in me to attend.
My barn time is my time. Me, the radio, the horses and the cats, and time to spin my little brain on all sorts of things, organizing them and putting them in their place, surrounded by the creatures I love most. Who do not speak.
It explains why the AERC Board of Directors is just not for me, and why I opted not to run for Director again. I’m happy to do my part, I’ll stand up and frankly state my case even if it is unpopular (and I’ll do it loudly sometimes), but once I have said what I have to say, have voted my conscience or shared my opinion, I am drained. I do not enjoy the banter, the discussion, the back-and-forth, the occasional drama, even though I participate in some of it — it leaves me wanting to find somewhere quiet to be and process it. To decompress. Somewhere quiet. I figure my best role is as a fairly self-sufficient and self-motivated cog in the wheel, where I can do what I can, and then go away for a bit to find my enthusiasm again.
It’s why riding Tevis is not on my bucket list. Too many horses, too many riders, just too much.
I hate the telephone, and I love email. I’ll write to you all day long but be short and succinct on the telephone, as a rule. I hate small talk.
Of course there is a spectrum of introversion. If you’re somewhere between an introvert and an extrovert, you’re an ambivert! (Yes, who knew, there is a word for it.)
My husband falls off the introvert edge. We joke, or I should say I joke — he doesn’t see what’s amusing about it — that he could easily live on an isolated ranch out west, all alone, with supplies dropped in by helicopter on some scheduled basis. He wouldn’t miss a thing. At least not much.
He’s one of my favorite riding partners. We can ride fifty miles together with very few words uttered. Usually mine and usually sounding something like “Can We Please Slow Down?”
If he invited me to live with him on that secluded ranch in Montana, I’d miss my friends and family.
One of them at a time, over a glass of red wine or a cold beer and a good meal. Knowing a quiet place and a book was waiting for me at home.