Caring For Your Extrovert

Engrossed in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, I putzed around his website today and uncovered the following article:

"Caring For Your Introvert"

One of the best lines is the following:

Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem
bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone
for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone.

That is me to the extreme. In fact, one of the remarks made when I was summarily kicked out of my apartment back in December was that I was on the phone all the time. Could I help being so? I wasn't talking to my roommate(s), so I needed to have alternate avenues of communicating with other people. Almost my entire day is spent in some form of communication or another: I'm typing emails, writing letters, texting, even journaling. (And yes, I haven't yet been fired. From this job, at least.)

In fact, the whole extrovert thing can be taken a bit too far, something I am (semi) aware of. Other than the occassional lunch date with just one other friend, I'm hard-pressed to name a time where it was just a tete-a-tete. This was illustrated during the past week when my "temporary Croatian boyfriend" was visiting. We wanted to go out for Korean barbeque, so I invited some friends along. 20 of them. Now, granted, we only ended up with six people for dinner (since there were a couple of no-shows), but I was still incapable of inviting any less. "These are just the people I thought would be interested," I explained when I showed him the list of names. He had no idea how many people I could've invited...

The same "quantity over quality" modus operandi came when he suggested that he take me out for dinner at my favorite Chicago restaurant. I immediately asked if we could double-date with my Italian friends, only to have him gently suggest that perhaps we could do both. What?! Do something one-on-one when there are hundreds of people to see? How could I? This reminded me of a time my freshman year of college, where a guy asked if I wanted to go to the movie theatre, which you had to drive to as it was off-campus. I brought along two friends (since, after all, the more the merrier, right?) That was our last date. Oops.

Almost 10 years later, I'm slowly learning that sometimes, two is better than many. In moderation, of course.