I thought I had a brilliant idea for this week’s essay. I was going to write about the third season of Hacks, which I just recently finished watching, and the representation of Debra Vance’s character as a woman driven by her ambitions (and its consequences) but there’s something else bugging me so much that I can’t focus on any fictional characters if not fictionalize my own life for a moment. See, I don’t know how to be personal without being too personal so kudos to the people writing memoirs without pissing off their family members, and to Garance Doré for being so effortlessly smart in writing of her life anecdotes without mentioning names, so all I can do is try.
This week I spent an inordinate amount of time surrounded by people. Way more than, what on average, I’m comfortable with. The thing is that I am an introvert and as such, I love to be a quiet observer and flourish in 1-1 conversations, but ask me to be in a group or to spend a lot of time surrounded by other people, and I shrink. This shrinkage of mine is not public knowledge because for years I have been practicing the art of the ‘cover-up’. See, I have had over a decade to practice behaving like an extrovert, hence the ‘cover-up’ expression, because of the social nature of the jobs I’ve had. From the beginning as a barista, then in the film industry, and later with my own agency. Facing clients, developing new business and pitches, running meetings, giving lectures, hosting workshops, and lastly being employed as a creative director leading me to talking to even more people. The practice of covering up my introverted nature made socializing look effortless (or so I believe).
Back in 20something, when I was high on the Instagram horse, I was invited to a blogger's tour that consisted of spending several days abroad together with other blogger-instagram-social-like people. We ate together, traveled together, and participated in activities together, we basically did everything together except sleeping with one another although I wonder if everyone refrained from the latter. The first couple of days I practiced and managed an outgoing and cordial vibe, interested in everyone’s life adventures eager to chat and hear those tales until dawn. Then the lack of free time, boundaries, and any resemblance of alone time started to weigh on me so I began shrinking. What does shrinking look like? Being more quiet and observant, avoiding participating in group activities, and if forced, well, force a smile until you can say you’re feeling unwell just to hide in your hotel room and skip dinner because you can’t possibly do any more talking, at least for a few months. Luckily I made a wonderful friend on that same trip whose friendship I still cherish to this day, but let me tell you, it’s hard being a lookalike extrovert in a group full of outgoing people. This happened somewhere in my early thirties and I already possessed some self-awareness, just enough to understand this was going to be the last blogger-influencer-instagram-press-trip I was going to for the foreseeable future.
The blogger-influencer-instagram-press-trips turned into business trips with colleagues and those have been a whole lot harder to process. I’ve had the extremely social colleague who wants to do everything together even spend that free ‘chilling’ hour before heading to the airport. Or the colleague who chronically overshares everything about their life, unloading all sorts of burdens on me ‘because I am a good listener’. Then there was the anxious colleague who couldn’t stop talking about everything and anything and everyone leaving my brain feeling like a pile of mush after which I felt I needed a month of therapy combined with a monk-like life to recuperate any energy whatsoever. There has also been the colleague who can’t stand being alone and gets the reception desk to call my hotel room because at 1 am I have stopped responding to texts.
I’ve also had wonderful colleagues and friends with whom I’ve had wonderful shared experience, running at very similar frequencies, but that’s not the point of this story.
During those years, I mastered the art of the cover-up. “Sure thing! I will wear my bathrobe over my pajamas to hang out with you at the hotel bar until your friends show up. No problem!”. “Of course, I will join you for dinner after we’ve spent the last two days together in the same conference room between meetings and presentations. OF COURSE”. I covered up so much that I forgot how to be true to myself in those professional situations. I forgot how to set boundaries and, even more so, how to restore my energy to show up as the lovely human being I can be instead of the snappy, short-answered, frustrated individual I become when I don’t get any time alone to, well, recharge my batteries.
Now we are at the point where, after a decade spent practicing being an extrovert, I’ve slowly started becoming more comfortable and unapologetic about communicating my needs and taking in all the superficial consequences like disappointing people and, of course, being disliked because on the surface I’m not THAT social anymore as I’m constantly saying NO.
Even tho saying no has been very difficult, once I’ve started to learn what my body and mind need in social settings, saying no has been my only self-preservation tool. I am going to use this cringy expression that sends my eyes rolling to the sky, but ‘protecting my energy’ has been something I’ve had to focus my attention on so that I can actually show up as the funny, calm, creative, and collected human that I am.
This is a balancing act that requires constant monitoring because as soon as I loosen up the grip and get carried away by commitments and social obligations, like in these past weeks, then I have to work twice as hard to reel myself in back to calm waters and eventually on the shore.
I haven’t managed a foolproof way to maintain my inner calm when spending so much time with people whose personalities are very different than mine, but all I have been able to do is collect valuable data. For instance, I know that mornings need to be quiet, like literally quiet. I’d much rather wake up an hour before and have breakfast in silence by myself rather than sit down at the communal table where all the colleagues are chatting away before the working day begins. I’ve learned that I need high-focus breaks because I can’t multitask all day long, and also that I need some space - like physical space between me and whomever I am spending a ton of confined time with. Hopefully, at some point, this collection of data points will help me create a map that allows me to navigate these situations in a collected way otherwise I’m going to have to wait until I hit my fifties and declare that decade as the ‘not give a f***’ and just be completely myself but then, why wait until then. Right?