Blessed quiet. I don't know why quiet works so well for me, but it does. It's like my soul can breathe.
I'm sitting in a restaurant over a cup of coffee on my Thursday night out and I've been waiting for days for this moment. Time to think. To write. To plan. To listen. To process. To be. I'm already a little sad for when it'll be over in a couple of hours.
In the past, when I've done introversion/extraversion tests, I've consistently scored somewhere very near, or on, the line between the two; I draw energy both from being with people and from being by myself. This makes perfect sense to me because it's reflective of my experience. I love being with people, love being with my kids, am energized by the ideas of others and need them, too, to bounce my own ideas off of. But when the days, sometimes weeks, go by and I've had no time by myself, my whole body feels the strain of it and I manifest my anxiety by being impatient and testy; I start to slide into depressive moments and I cry easily with the stress of not having time to myself. These are the times I feel quite overwhelmed. In order to find a balance, I ideally would need a night or two off every week, a 24-hour silent retreat once a month, and maybe an afternoon off every couple of weeks or so.
I'm working on shifting the balance a little because I want more often to be at my best...or at least at my somewhat best. My kids, Geoff, deserve that. I need that, too, to feel competent, sane, productive, and joyful. The truth is that I have a great life...but I get mired in the detail and relentlessness of it a little too often. I want to live this great life of mine a little more intentionally and consciously, and I intend to. All of the thoughts I've been having about parenting and about how we do learning at home...all of these things are starting to come together a little more in my brain and heart, and it's all oriented towards assisting me in managing our lives in that intentional and conscious direction.
And that feels good. The journey is good.
I'm guessing I would fall somewhere in the middle as well. One of my fears of becoming a parent is the loss of blessed quietness! We have had almost 18 years of just the two of us, lots of quietness as we are both naturally drawn to quiet and calm. Somehow i think that will be not the case when we get our little ones home! Thanks for sharing your need for quietness and the need to refuel from others as well. A good reminder that I will need to pay attention to that need, to be self aware and practice self care in this way! Allison
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