downtime v. isolation

I’m still here - and I'm fine.

After all the chaos and drama of selling a house, moving, buying a house, and moving again while still adapting to my new job and getting the ball rolling on my homestudy, and then getting the Mother Of All Winter Colds, I was just plain ol' wiped out.

(The new job requires almost constant interaction with people - a feature which I *like* - and a feature which takes a toll on an introvert like me.)

When I’ve reached the point where I don't have much left in the way of resources, I tend to crawl into a little hole and stop communicating.

The problem is, once I’ve done my hidey-hole thing, I feel guilty.

Guilty for phone calls not returned, for emails not written, for blog posts not made. And then the perfectionist side of me somehow puts it in my brain that I have to fix that stuff, or that I have to make up for it, before resuming normal interaction.

So then I spend a couple of days not communicating because I feel so bad about not communicating. Charming, isn't it?

Written out here, this cycle sounds ludicrous. But, in the moment, it feels very real.

One of the big reasons I wanted to take the new job, and move, was that it would force me to re-engage, after several years of self-imposed isolation. I spent the last 4 years living alone in a community where I didn’t know many people, and working for myself.

I liked and needed the isolation at first, because it felt so overwhelming to have to interact with people. I was spinning from the breakup of my relationship and the death of my father and sister. I just couldn’t deal.

The very small world I created for myself served me for a while, and allowed me to grieve, and to recover and build back up my internal resources. But then I became used to it. It was still *easier* than interacting with people every day, but it was no longer serving me well.

I want – really want – more regular, genuine human contact. I am so grateful to my friends who have put up with my hidey-hole periods, and still reach out. I’m going to try not to do that so much, or for so long…

I do want the kind of relationships in which, if you drop off the radar screen for a week, people ask where you are. This used to feel like a burden, and remnants of the feeling remain, even though they are inconsistent with my true desire to connect.