Downsides of Being an Introvert

Since the last post, given that it was a couple of hours ago, I've sort of done a lot. Mentally, that is. Or at least, I think I have, I guess.

I'm beginning to realise (again) that the more human interaction I have, face-to-face, the more detached from myself I become. It's probably why I coasted through school and college as an emotionally unavailable robot. Seeing people five or six days a week for eight hours really isn't my thing, or so it would seem.

I can handle interaction that isn't in person fairly well most of the time. It's just seeing a lot of people and a lot of disruption to my routine that throws me off. Recently, there has been metric fucktonnes of routine disruption and face-to-face interaction. It hasn't all been a bad thing but it has definitely drained me. Mentally, physically, emotionally: all I want to do is switch off and spend a few hours watching Fringe uninterrupted. That's not to say that if someone came to me with an emergency, I'd ignore them - not at all! But what I do really need is just a few hours to just recharge.

It sounds a lot like I'm just slating social interaction but that couldn't be further from my intentions. I love spending an afternoon catching up with friends or just hanging out. I love meeting up with people and while I might not be so wild about meeting new people most of the time, I can definitely see the merits of it, especially while trying to succeed in a business as network-heavy as photography and photo editing. All that I need, I think, is to manage my time better. I'm trying to heal (as new-age as that sounds) and I simply can't do that if I'm exhausting myself by spending all my time socialising or running around after other people or doing things for other people.
But at the same time, helping others and doing things for others and all that makes me feel better about myself so helps the healing process. What I've got to do is find a balance between the two that allows me to get better by giving myself space and time but that also allows me to feel better about myself by helping others.

Now, after all that renewed self-realisation, I'm going to head home and start working on the poster for Violence Is Violence Festival. After I've made a decent start on that, or done everything I can for now, I'm going to start working on more photo edits. I've got a lot of work to do on my "Uncanny Valley" project so it'll be good to get started on that in earnest after handing in my final piece.

No, Actually, I'm Not Dead Yet.

Getting back into the blog writing thing is tricky. I set up a little scheduling reminder thing on my phone a little while back to remind me to blog on certain days and stuff and I've steadfastly ignored each and every one up until today. To be honest, I even ignored today's until I got bored and restless enough.
I've been in a pretty dark place over the last few months and I know that I find blogging cathartic, it's just getting the willpower to actually do it that's the hard part.

A lot of the time, I just can't be bothered to blog; I'm so consumed will loathing for pretty much everything that the idea of doing something constructive disgusts and repels me. Although, occasionally, I can use this as fuel for creativity - photo-editing and things like it have been done very successfully in these darker days. NaNoWriMo in particular pulled me through a pretty rough time last year - it was just about a month after my Gran passed away and having Wrimo related obligations pulled me through it and forced me out of the house on a bi-weekly basis. It gave me a good, solid, creative outlet something to do other than just the monotony of work and college and crying. It helped. Sure, my grades for that period still suffered, my manner with the customers took a beating, but I didn't do too many self-destructive things. As pointless and futile as living seemed, I stuck with it, I got my 50k words in the 30 days, against all odds and successfully 'won' NaNoWriMo.

Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling on about that now, this post was just to get me back into the swing of writing (again) and I think it has. I'll do another post tonight, probably a medication based one. Maybe a music based one. It doesn't really matter to be honest, I'm just trying to theme my posts or at least my days a little bit more than having my brain vomit guff all over the internet. Maybe I'll do a weekly round-up of 'Shit That I Find Interesting' rather than spamming my Facebook feed with links from anywhere and everywhere... ANYWAY! I'm just trying to get my head in a little bit of order or something so that I don't feel like I'm going around the bend all the time.

Peace, people, TTYL!