Embracing my extrovert-ness

I know I annoy a lot of people (if you’re one of them, why on earth are you torturing yourself by reading my blog, you weirdo)!

The reasons are many-fold, but mainly I believe it’s because;

a) I am cynical about everything (evvvvverything) and I make sure everyone knows about it.
b) I am très sarcastic.
c) I respond to almost every single situation in life with humour; the more serious the situation the more compelled I am to become Eddie Izzard at the Royal Albert Hall. (Oh, and I laugh at my own jokes, and sometimes do a piggy snort because I’m so pleased with my own hilariousness).

OK, so none of this sounds particularly horrendous – and it can be reasonably entertaining if you catch me on a good day. If though I was sent on a U.N. mission to me (in a purely observational capacity) I would report back (probably in PowerPoint form) about someone who was hard work to spend time with, majorly ‘full of themselves’, possibly a bit on the insane side and a total show off. The truth is I am, I’m all these things (and more – believe me I have many, many more ways of annoying you than the three I’ve mentioned above).

I’ve found many, many articles out there with helpful advice for introverts, which is great, but they all seem to imply that us extroverts have it easy, that we always succeed, always get the happy ending. Uh, firstly, no we don’t! Secondly, it’s not always easy being like… this. Half the time I feel like I have some sort of brain disease – my mind races and races and I can’t keep up, I feel physically giddy with ideas, thoughts, possibilities. I talk out loud to try and help me focus – sometimes there are people within earshot to hear me ramble on, often there are not. I very rarely finish a train of thought before I’ve moved onto a completely different topic, I feel a bit bewildered when the people I am conversing with seem to be having trouble with the five conversations at a time we are having and I’m totally impatient about EVERYTHING. it’s all about broad stokes, I struggle with detail. Oh, and I can only really get on with people who are clever, funny and friendly (in that order).

So why am I mentioning all this? Well, I have realised after (almost) 43 years that I feel more alive and more ‘me’ when I can forget the social niceties and just ‘be’ like this. I have a scary suspicion that I am turning into a shouty old person…. but NO not old! Man alive, I don’t feel old at all. Just shouty.

I don’t plan on being deliberately offensive or anything but you have fair warning that I’m going to experiment with leaving the safety-latch off my personality for a while to see how much trouble I get into. I’m going to stop listening to that voice in my head that bangs on and on saying “shhhhhhh, people might hear you”, “people might not ‘get you”, “I don’t think they like you standing on the tables in this establishment” and just get on with things, with life. I think it will help me be more creative and more ‘me’.

I’m going to unrepress myself. (I may swear more, too).