Quiet

Today is a bank holiday here and, more or less as planned, I'm having a duvet day. Actually, I planned a reading day and if the weather was fine was going to take a picnic to the park and spend the day there reading. The sun was out in force this morning and yet I couldn't bring myself to get enthusiastic about the idea of going out at all. And so a duvet day it is. I slept until nearly half-ten and haven't gotten out of bed for more than a few minutes to grab some cereal a while ago when I started to get hungry. And now to write this. After which, I'll retreat back to the horizontal and snuggle up to my book again in my duvet cocoon.

The book that has captured my attention is Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I can't remember exactly where, how or when I first heard about this book but I do remember that when a friend wrote a book review of it a couple of years ago thinking to myself, "Oh yeah, I wanted to read that, too". We all know it takes me a long time to get around to doing anything but in March I finally ordered the book and on the day it arrived, I'd read the first ten pages or so within a few minutes. Unfortunately, I was just about to leave the house for an important choir rehearsal and I had to drag myself away from it. I was kind of glad about that, though, as even the first ten pages had already succeeded in bringing a tear or three to my eye. Suffice to say that I decided I wouldn't pick it up again until things had quietened down a bit and I had a chance to go through it in peace and quiet. See, there's that word again: quiet.

And today is the day. Actually, I started during the week, partially as a way to try to start unwinding after a particularly strenuous weekend that saw me out and about and on the go all weekend. Not at all an introvert kind of a weekend. Which is why I decided that this long weekend was going to involve seeing as few people as possible. I need to recover.

I'm not even halfway through the book by now and it is bringing up some very powerful feelings for me. I have marked numerous pages that I want to go back and read again/think about some more. And I have had several moments of feeling like I have almost reached the point of unlocking some of the mystery of why I am the way I am sometimes. I have a feeling that discussions of introversion and extroversion are going to be coming up in my next therapy sessions.

So here I am, introvert, shy, highly sensitive (apparently these are indeed all separate things) and feeling such a sense of relief that these are all real things and I'm not crazy for being the way I am. Much like I felt when I first discovered the world of gentle/simple living and frugality blogs and realised that not only was I not alone in my "craziness", I was a very long way behind hundred and thousands of other people in the world. It's quite a feeling.