Desperation for Nothing in Particular

I liked how Jaclyn started her first post, and since at heart I'm desperately trendy, I'm going to do the same. Well, almost the same, because it's obvious to everyone now that I've ACTUALLY begun my first post with a disclaimer about how and why I'm going to begin my first post ...

I'm Tyson. And I'm an INSJ. At least I think I'm an INSJ. I always describe myself as an INSJ. Well, at least as frequently as anyone CAN describe themself using their Meyers Briggs personality. I don't literally go around meetings disclosing this information to casual observers. That would be ... well, something I would consider inappropriate.

I think the thing I really need to say is that the reason it took me so long to look at and subesquently sign up and post to this blog is that I am an introvert, like the others who have written before me, but I feel I'm in a category all my own. I am a TECHNOLOGICAL introvert. Technological introverts do all the things normal introverts do - we shun frequent and overbearing social interaction, avoid trips to bars, complain about being at BINGO at the Hippo, search desperately for a reason to cancel our Tuesday night plans, and curl up in bed at night with that special someone (or pillow) feeling like we're fulfilled. But Techtroverts, as I'd like to call us (actually I wouldn't, except that I already did ...) feel the same way about the world wide webs of the internets.

Like you, I have a Facebook page. I've tweeted. I email my mother and family once a week. I EVEN have an account on MySpace with a page I'm pretty proud of. But here's the E! True Hollywood story about the whole thing. It stresses me the fuck out. Seriously.

I keep thinking - how can any person spend so much time in contact with everyone else? My partner spends a lot of time on facebook. He posts, he does those little application things, he chats. He loves it. And sometimes I'm envious that he has such a good time. But I log in, and in five minutes I'm completely overwhelmed and log out.

Also, I honestly think I found out that one of my best friends was getting married because I saw his facebook status. That's no way to live ... right? I mean, I guess I should just be expecting an Evite to his wedding. And then I keep thinking - if I had mattered that much to him in the first place, maybe he would have chosen to tell me in some other way. Maybe I've been relegated to the dreaded status of Facebook "friends" - so that despite our long standing relationship, he can politely put me on ignore, along with Kandy from Palm Beach, with whom he only shares a passionate interest in starfish on moonlit beaches.

Where are the letters? Not that I even want letters. I don't. My mother writes me a letter every week, and it doesn't make me think our relationship is somehow intrinsically more special because we're using an outdated form of communication. I think I mean that with letters, communication was special. You'd write a letter to your friend in California and send it on the pony express, or something, and they'd wait for it. They'd ACTUALLY wait for your letter. You know, in that oh-oh-the-wells-fargo-wagon-is-a'comin'-down-the-street-oh-please-let-it-be-for-me sense. Instead of sending you an instant message, and then emailing you 45 seconds later when you don't respond, and then texting. Only to find out that you took an extended trip to the bathroom.

But I think the point of all of this is that I feel like all of this just means that, not unlike Jaclyn and her summer of exploration (for which I congratulate her), I am trying to reach out and figure out what all this means. Maybe a techtrovert (god, did I really make up that word?) can still make sense of all of this communication, and have a good time. At least I'm going to try.

So, that summer when I...

Just now I took a step back to look at myself -- currently, pacing the downstairs singing in Italian and wishing the air conditioning would hurry up and do its job -- and thought, wow, what a good summer this has been! Or rather, spring and summer.

Despite being pretty much done and over with school for quite a while, I still use seasons -- often summers -- to gauge different stages of my life. You know, there was that summer where I lived alone just to prove I could do it. Or the one where I worked 60 hour weeks to try to forget how miserable and devastated I was over a breakup. Or the one where I moved to Maryland and tried to convince myself I enjoyed living in a lonely apartment in a town I didn't like.

Winter seems to be a time for settling in, for bonding with good friends over homemade soup and cuddling under blankets to watch a movie. Summer inherently requires me to get out more, to leave the house.

This summer represents an unprecedented level of that getting out, exploring, and reaching out, and I can trace it back to the reason I'm pacing the downstairs singing in Italian. At the beginning of the summer I signed up for a group voice class, as much to practice singing in the presence of others as to shake the rust off my vocal cords. I've learned to see our classroom as a safe space where I can sing in the same way I might do alone. On the first day I had to stand up and sing a song a cappella for the group, which broke my stage fright more by force than by desire. I feel like this six-week class provides a pivotal point around which the rest of the summer's events revolve.

For example, I've invited friends to the beach, made a pact of sorts to adopt a positive attitude/demeanor, reached out to make plans for spending time with people I like, gotten a real job, and so on. Overall, I feel like I've spent the spring and summer so far challenging myself to do things that scare me but also bring me a healthy dose of joy when it's all said and done. And maybe, just maybe, if I keep tip-toeing my way outside my comfort zone, I'll take a step back and say wow, my life right now is downright enviable.

How's that for a positive demeanor, free of angst and irritability?

Just a Thought

Brief musings:

I may be an introvert, but I routinely fall in love with my friends. Maybe that's why I don't have a huge number of them -- I want to leave enough room for everyone. One of my biggest fears about my close friends is that I'll never convey to them how much I really do care for them (I'm no good at that). Starting new friendships is a huge deal to me, especially with people I really like.

So...yeah. Sometimes I wonder if other people are this dramatic and intense about friend relationships.

Reading old zines.

I was about to post something else about social interactions and the introvert/extrovert dilemma, but found this from last week and decided to change the subject (for a day or two).

During a feeble effort to sort through the pile of boxes packed away in my basement, I unearthed one labeled "zine stuff." It contained all the original flats, plus a surprising number of paper copies, for the zine I produced from ages 15-19. I find my earliest issues rather embarrassing now, but the last two were both surprising and inspiring. 19 seems forever ago, but the last hair-under-six years represent a lot of personal growth and discovery for me.

For example, I was shocked by some of the views I held about my own sexuality. How "gay" was "just another label I [didn't] believe in" and how straight folks repressing same-sex attraction led to body issues. And how I could never be labeled/self-identified as bisexual.

To which now-me, sitting on the couch and reading this through, said: "WTF!?"

Recently I was with friends late at night, talking and occasionally dozing until the morning hours. Somewhere in there we asked, what if kids were brought up to be comfortable and open with their sexuality, no matter what it was? We represent all points on the Kinsey Scale and agreed our high school experiences were...less than encouraging.

Reading this makes me wish I'd had a venue to express and explore my sexuality at a younger age. That I knew and processed the term "bisexual" at ages 17-19 is actually somewhat surprising given my high school experience. Non-straight -- and non-white, for that matter -- culture/viewpoints were simply not represented. Period. Some of the words I heard about gay people are so hurtful I rarely, rarely repeat them. I think they're made more so by the fact that at the time, they passed like water under the bridge: no reprimands or consequences from those supposedly in charge.

For those of us who could/did experience opposite-sex attraction, adopting the heterosexual label was automatic and completely natural. At least in my case, any potential same-sex attraction was manifested in other ways, most of them negative.

So it doesn't surprise me that even at 19, I was still saying "it's not natural for straight people to only find the opposite sex attractive." No one had really taught me what "natural" was. I just didn't realize it was possible for me to own an identity other than straight.

In the end, I don't want gay children. I don't want straight children. I also don't want children just like me. I just want them to grow up knowing that whoever they are is okay. They can identify (or not) with whatever label they want. But nothing they feel -- beyond the stuff we all feel as teenagers -- should make them feel afraid, angry, or ashamed. It's hard enough already to figure out who you are, right? After all, I have a whole bookshelf full of old journals documenting my struggles with just being a young adult.

I'm a stranger here myself.

If, before I had departed the United States for South Korea, I had encountered a future version of myself in a phonebooth with George Carlin, telling me I'd spend the bulk of my weekends out in bars and clubs in the party district of Seoul, I'd have laughed uproariously. Uproariously, I say, even knowing full well that time-traveling prophets (especially ones that are you) should always be taken very, very seriously. Me? Out clubbing? Preposterous.

But yet, after four months in Korea, I've noticed a curious divide in myself. Under normal circumstances—which is to say, back home in the US—I was content to be by off by myself, doing my own thing. But now, some new, alien part of me looks forward to the weekend and the prospect of drinking and dancing and being with people. Even now, I'm typing this up when I should be getting ready to catch the subway into Seoul, where I'll spend the night at a friend's place, and from whence we'll depart for one of the biggest tourist events in South Korea.

It's funny that I'm willing to admit that I want to go out at all, when pretty much every "introverts" community on the Internet relishes its role as the wilting wallflower. Things can turn into a virtual pissing game of sorts, with people secretly trying to out-do each other as the most reclusive; the one who hates parties and crowds and people the most. (This is also related to the fact that extraverts are, among introverted communities, considered inferior or somehow dumber.)

But the key word in my earlier statement is part: another part still dreads how exhausted I'll inevitably feel afterward—even if I come out of the weekend with my dignity intact and another story to add to my repertoire. It's a weird sort of schizophrenia, the dance between the introverted desire to be alone and the extroverted desire to go out and have fun with people. And sometimes, what I say and how I act is so totally alien to me that afterward even I don't understand why I did what I did. I'm pretty much a stranger in my own head.

I think introverts shun that part of their desire—the desire to occasionally be with people and enjoy the company of a living, breathing person—and come out the worse for wear. They don't seem to get beyond forming communities of themselves, which are almost always fueled by intense, soul-searching discussion; while spontaneous and/or mindless fun and general silliness isn't exactly taboo, it's certainly not the norm—despite the fact that everyone gets silly at least once in a while.

So I pose a question to the introverts, borrowing from The Dark Knight as employed by /b/tards and all other kinds of netizens:

Y SO SRS?

Free Wifi What?

I'm writing this from a Greyhound bus. Not because I have any particular urgent need to do so, but because I can. Something about being on the internet while going through the Harbor Tunnel makes me laugh to myself about the state of our society. But my laughter doesn't stop me from partaking. No no indeed.

Hello World.

Hi, I'm Jaclyn and I'm an INFJ. Meyers Briggs personality types are important to me. Also, I always need to fight the urge to write angsty words on the Internet. Sometimes it's necessary, but not when we have only just begun. On another blog I found two little pieces I'd like to post here while I gather my thoughts, and this is the one that wasn't angsty. I wrote it recently while at work (don't tell!).

Today is one of those days I wish I could record all the little scenes in my head, the ones where instead of listening to ridiculous pop music on my headphones at my desk I am bursting into song in the lobby. It’s truly unbelievable what a good synthesizer riff and a catchy chorus will do to my general disposition.

If you’d like to get the full effect, queue up Aqua’s “Calling You” while reading this post.

My point here is, many of my waking hours are spent setting everyday life to music video or musical theatre-type situations in my head. To give an idea, I related very well to the scene in the last season of Six Feet Under where Claire sings the pantyhose song at her temp job. Secretly, when keeping company only with myself, I am bubbly and silly and full of song and dance. This is so totally me, and sometimes it’s just a shame that being me comes easiest when I’m not interacting with anyone.

But one of my favorite things about life is how laughing at yourself and being a little silly – even if not outwardly so – can be a lifeline between you and sanity.