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My Year of Rest and Relaxation (rwb S6E17)

Last updated: Wed Jul 17 2024

I did too much last year and I got bit! So this year I am going to learn to appreciate being alone again.

Coming out of the pandemic, I was suddenly an Extravert™️.1 I started attending every event that came my way and hosting a fair number as well.

Welp, I got burnt out, and wound up in some nasty interpersonal drama to boot. Plus, I set an informal goal of finishing a second draft of A Curious Dream by mid-March, when I’ll be out a couple weeks for travel, and I suddenly realized I’d have to spend a lot more time writing in January and February to catch up.

So this year I decided I would be an Introvert™️, or at least be more intentional about how I was spending my time. Learn to say no to some things, you know?!

Two weeks in I am happy with how the experiment is going. It is kind of nice to have a yawning chasm of boredom commonly called a “free afternoon” and not feel like that is merely a rest break in between reps at the bodybuilding gym that is social life.2 It is kind of nice to feel like I can go meander on a bike ride for an hour or two and not “waste” time that I need to “power relax”. It is kind of nice to spend an evening at home reading instead of going out again.

In the words of The Last Unicorn, “that’s the way life was meant to be. You’re supposed to be too late for some things. Don’t worry about it.”

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Footnotes

  1. Some may quibble with the spelling and say it is supposed to be “extrovert”. However I taught my laptop to prefer “extravert”. Also, now I’m not actually sure which one is widely accepted as the “correct” spelling. Spelling is strange.

  2. I’m not sure that metaphor made sense. Whatever.