Introverts: ‘It’s too peopley outside’
By Burton W. Cole
The writers conference was over. For three days, about 500, maybe more, of us loners who usually work in solitude had been mashed quill pen to quill inside a network of meeting rooms.
Now, we were packing up, nearly making glancing eye contact as we nodded goodbye.
Big gatherings wear out introverts.
In one out-of-the-way corner, lying on the floor next to a dog, a conference organizer sported a T-shirt that declared, “It’s too peopley outside.”
Crowds energize those overly social and talkative extroverts. Crowds terrorize introverts.
It reminds me of a quote I saw from a group called Our Mindful Life: “A large group of people is called a ‘no thanks.’”
At lunch, I was forced to sit at a table with eight or nine other strangers. One of them, the ringer, was the spouse of a writer. He kept peppering the rest of us with super awkward questions, like, “Hi, I’m Ben. What’s your name?” and “What session did you like best so far?”
The intrusiveness was barely bearable. It’s not that we’re angry or depressed or antisocial. Well, maybe antisocial.
Mostly, we just need to not have to talk to anyone for a while. Honest, silence is a great way to communicate.
At the start of the conference, we were presented with a scavenger hunt ice-breaker game. We were supposed to invade each other’s spaces to find others who were from our state or who wrote in a genre different than ours or someone who gave you a hug today. (Wait, what? With people?)
Even the lure of prizes wasn’t enough to entice me into the swarm. How much does the average introvert weigh? Not enough to break the ice.
I ended the conference with two signatures, only because when someone shoved their list in my face, I made them sign mine in return. Mostly I keep an iceberg scowl in place and glared at anyone who appeared to think about breaking my berg.
Someone — he didn’t leave his name, being an introvert — once said, “Introverts don’t crash parties; we gracefully exit them.”
Twice during the conference, I excused myself from the dinner table to use the restroom and “forgot” to return to the banquet hall.
Why is it that people always are telling us introverts to be more talkative and leave our comfort zones, but nobody tells the extroverts to stop yammering, get out of our faces and make the zone comfortable?
Mostly, we work well with others — from a safe distance — but we just want to go home. Being around people exhausts introverts. We need alone time to recharge. There’s a big difference between alone and lonely. You can do lonely in a crowd, but alone is a lot harder to accomplish in a gaggle of others.
For us, the lockdown of 2020 was a blessing. The pandemic part was a nightmare, but being encouraged to settle in my own chair in my own space was a dream.
I once was part of a volunteer work crew staring down a long yard of fallen autumn leaves. My buddy Paul said to several of us, “We can rake side by side the whole length of the yard, and we’ll be talking all the way.”
That sounded like torture — even more than having to rake in the first place. I didn’t want to talk; I just wanted to get the job done so that I could go home.
Now we need a good slogan. I found a couple rally cries, posted anonymously, because, you know, introvert:
“Introverts, unite! Separately. In your own homes.”
“Introverts, unite! We’re here, we’re uncomfortable, and we want to go home.”
Because it’s too peopley outside.
Quietly write to Burt at news@falmouthoutlook.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook. It’s not too peopley there.