The Beauty of Silence

In order to understand any of what follows, it is necessary for me to tell you something about myself: I generally have an absolutely pathetic social life, and no professional life to speak of at the moment. I'm not wallowing in self pity or anything, merely stating a fact. I am also very much an introvert, according to every personality test out there. That might be why my lack of a social life doesn't bother me all that much.

Okay, time to get to the point. Yesterday was a notable exception to my otherwise dull life. I got to do a number of fun things, nearly all of which involved interacting with other people. It was great fun, and I enjoyed having things to do and places to go for a change (well, things I wanted to do and places I wanted to go to). The only problem is that by 10:00 at night, having engaged in social interaction almost continuously since 7:30 in the morning, my conversational skills had been severely overexerted. It kind of reminded me of the first day of tryouts in the fall, when you haven't used your muscles all summer and suddenly they all rebel against you. My brain was so exhausted that it was all I could do to respond appropriately to my mom's attempts at converstion when I got home. I felt so bad, but I had no conversation left.

By the time my mom went to bed, I had more or less figured out that my problem was overstimulation and took steps to correct the problem. I turned off the TV and had some quiet time with my book. Unfortunately, I was so tired that I very quickly fell asleep on the couch.

Anyway, this experience helped remind me of the importance of taking time for myself. I need to have my time alone so that I can really appreciate my time with others, and to recharge my social batteries. This also made me think more about having my own place, so that when I am overstimulated from a day spent with children I can have I quiet space in which to unwind. A good goal, and possible motivation for getting off my butt (both physically and metaphorically) and getting a job. Or two.

So this probably isn't all that interesting to anyone but me, and the one person who will probably read this has already heard the whole story, but I posted, and that is my main objective for right now. =0)