Sliver of hope evaporated. No homecoming for me this weekend. That does equal a pretty dull weekend, I think.... but all of my weekends have been dull since one short-story worthy night in late July, so there's nothing new there.
As dull weekends go, I'm getting used to them, but one things you've got to get used to about them is that, as dull as they are going in, there are ways for them to be surprising.
The most surprising thing is I often don't know how I'm going to respond to it emotionally. Some say emotions are largely about Entry Posture (that's IV-speak for your frame of mind going into something), and I do think that's true (both because it is true and because I'll hopefully get paid to say it's true someday)... but emotions are kind of wild-card for extroverts... maybe they're wild card for everyone, but it's a lot easier to predict when you'll have free time to be alone to recharge than it is to predict extrovertable moments, especially on weekends which, after four years of college, are hard to dial down to mundanity (which isn't a word, but I believe it should be, so it is).... probably, additionally, especially on a weekend when I kind of feel like I'm being held out of a huge party going on in a place I long to be every couple of hours (that's a bit of hyperbole, but at least daily, it does sneak into my mind that "I wish I was in Wooster," and that happens even more often if I think about people and in times when I am fed up with the overall lack of extroversion, out-going-opportunities, and things of that ilk, that I certainly took for granted in college. I've always been a sort of borderline Introvert, but I've learned in the past two months that that's more a cultivated taste for refined alone-time than it is actual introversion. The truth is, without ample opportunities to process outwardly, I get naturally depressed and just want to sleep all of the time. Yesterday, I wrote the longest facebook message of my life (which is quite the feat, considering many of you have probably received the longest facebook message you've ever seen from me...well, maybe that's not true...but if you ask my past two girlfriends, they'd verify that...), and after the about two hours I spent composing it, I was in the best mood I've been in since leaving the Wooster caravan after Chapter Focus Week. It had been too long, since I had that sort of chance (and I probably took advantage of it, and I'm not totally sure the recipient of that message is all too pleased with it's length right now... the downside of being an extrovert with a ridiculous penchant for producing voluminous amounts of text without thinking is that you often take advantage of people and use them to get your extroverted fix.... not that I even intend to do that, but it happens without my thinking about it...I just get to writing and don't come up for any sort of air or reflection for a few thousand words....and I often have sentences of parenthetical statements embedded in much shorter sentences), so I just kind of exploded into a facebook message. Actually, there were a lot of "too long" things about that... it wasn't just my lack of social interaction leading to it.
Why am I even writing this right now? Let's be honest...if anyone likes to read this, is liking reading this right now, it's just because you're a good friend of mine and are interested in what I'm writing because it's me. There's nothing interesting here and it's just thinly veiled, near-emoesque complaining.
But I'm writing because I feel like I have to...because I don't have any other option to let anything out.
Last year and last semester especially, and really, largely in the last 3 years at Wooster, I would "read" in Common Grounds...not because it was a good place to read....it often wasn't, but no matter who was there, it was a place to talk to people. This often got awesome...this often got drastically unawesome... but it was something to do that was preferable to reading alone...always would be, even when I had to get the reading done by the next day...especially even.
Of course, it is not the exclusive need of an extrovert to have people involved in his or her life, to engage in social activity. But it's a need I feel acutely, and I know being an extrovert has much to do with that.
There must be balance, that's for sure....
And right now, my life is remarkably unbalanced to "space to reflect" side... especially when I'm not that good at "reflection" on my own in the first place.
That's why I have a blog. Not because I have anything important to say a lot of the time, and not because I really care that someone is interested in what I have to say (or feel that they should be...although sometimes I do)... really, I just need a place to talk, to feel like someone is listening....and I can't trick myself into believing that about a word document...or even God really. I have a healthy, oftentimes written (on my part) conversational relationship with God... but I don't feel like it fills the extroversion need.... I wonder if that merits exploration..... if it does, it doesn't tonight...but it probably does, by someone, sometime....maybe me, some day
-Zack
"I'm making plans to be with you, but have they come unglued?"
-Mae
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