Because I’m still recovering my emotional resilience, I’m hyper-aware of those things that I consider “extroverting,” that is, those things that take more energy than they’re putting in.
For example, it takes some amount of energy to grill something. The planning takes the largest percentage of that energy. Doing the actual work, that is, making the rub or sauce, preparing the meat, cleaning the grill (if it needs cleaning), and then the actual cook take very little energy. In addition, those things feed my soul and make my life better, so I come up on the positive side for all of that.
SIDE NOTE: OMG have I been cooking some amazing meat recently. Best ribs I’ve ever done. Best rolled pork shoulder. I’m not always hitting the mark—the brisket I just did left a lot to be desired. Good taste, but dry. And I’m still working on perfecting the cure that I use for bacon. It’s been fun though. And it feeds my soul.
It surprised me when I realized just how much energy social media uses. Just scrolling for about ten minutes leaves me exhausted. And I have a really clean Facebook feed, with good people posting positive, funny things. It’s still too much.
Watching TikTok videos still calms me down. I can watch my resting heart rate plummet when I sit and do that for ten minutes. I watch without sound, and I’m primarily watching people build things. Still not sure why calms me so much but it does.
I write postcards every month for my Patreon people who are at a certain tier. (Yes, this is a hint. I have a Patreon that y’all should consider joining: https://www.patreon.com/leahcutter)
I found myself procrastinating in May. It wasn’t until I started writing them that I realized that somewhere in my brain, even this sort of communication is considered extroverting. (Apologies for those of you who get them for how late they’re coming this month!)
Of course, there are the obvious occasions, like going out to eat at a loud restaurant. While I consider the person I was with one of those “non-persons” who doesn’t take energy but instead, feeds it, being in such a loud environment still crushed me.
Driving is extroverting. I don’t know if it’s because there are so many moving parts—beyond the other cars there’s also awareness of speed and gas. I’m really good at patterns, and I pay attention when I drive. I know that I see things before my husband does. But all of that’s exhausting right now. More so than it used to be.
Writing, too, takes emotional resilience. I find myself writing along, then I hit a wall pretty hard. Can only do 2000 words in a morning at this point. Hoping to build up those flabby writing muscles and push it up to 3000 per day next week. (Or perhaps the week after that.)
Emotional confrontations between characters take the most energy. Plus, when I’m this tired (because there’s still an underlayer of exhaustion in my life) I frequently lose opinion when the character enters a new setting. It becomes mere description instead of opinionated setting. I’m aware of this, though, so I always go back over these sections first thing, when I’m fresh and have lots of energy.
In addition, as part of my process, I always cycle over the words I wrote the day before. My writing isn’t as smooth as it once was. I find myself doing a lot more fixing as I’m going over these words. Fortunately, that just brings me joy, the feeling that I’m making it right.
I still find myself constantly adding in things to this novel. We’ll see if I’ve managed to smooth everything out by the time I’ve finished.
So if you find that I’m not making a lot of external commitments, or that I stay a very short time whenever I go out somewhere, realize it isn’t you, it’s me. I’m still recovering, and extroverting takes too much out of me.
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