I have considered myself an extraverted person for most of my life. I don’t know that I needed to be with people so much as I enjoyed being with people. However, I have also begun to understand that there are two sides of me and that I need to balance them.
I’ve always been a writer, pretty much since I was six years old, but when I reflect back, my need for being with people always seemed to outweigh the need to be alone. Unless I was running, then I have mostly always wanted to be alone for that.
However, since the pandemic there was shift in me. I won’t say that I have become more introverted because of the pandemic because my life always was shifting at that time. The two events just happened to coincide. My research job was ending just as the pandemic was beginning, but this had been in the works for a year.
The pandemic gave me more time to sew, something that I was working toward. I already had my writing in a good place– what I do almost first thing after I sit down at my desk in the early mornings. But the sewing is sort of the second half of my day after my “desk work” has been finished.
My life ebbs and flows with appointments and things to do like look for textiles at estate sales. Some days I’m home all day, others it’s in and out, the dogs watching me as I leave and celebrating when I return.
We just completed our fifth trip since February, four to California and one to Arizona. this weekend we’ll head back to Palm Springs for one last vintage market until the fall. After spending hours and days alone creating, suddenly all my work is there for everyone to see and enjoy. There’s a lot that doesn’t occur to me. I create what I enjoy, I put everything of myself into that I can, and then I throw it out to the world. These events, more than social media ever could since you can’t actually touch anything, have allowed me to see how much people appreciate my work. And me.
Then we return home and I’m ready to create again. There’s a bit of a low-grade grief as I go from being out with everyone to being alone again (usually lasts one day and it’s in the background of the excitement of new items to make). I have begun to understand, especially because I used to be a public speaker about suicide and suicide grief, that this is part of that public and private life and how they must exist side by side.
I need the private, quiet life to create. And I need the public life to share. Giving them a balance of both allows me to be who I’m supposed to be in this world.