The Sunday Salon: All’s Quiet

It has been quiet here, hasn’t it? Or maybe you haven’t even noticed.

Either way, it’s alright. Autumn is a time for drawing inward, for pulling all your inner resources together, storing energy and warmth for the cold hard days ahead.

I am a quiet person, best suited to being home with my family, my dogs, my books. I’m happy to let a certain few friends enter - in small groups only, please - but also just as happy when they’ve left and I’m on my own once again. Crowds of people with their noise and activity suck the life right out of me - I recharge my batteries when I’m alone and left to own devices.

A few weeks ago, I took a shortened, online version of the MBTI, and was a little surprised to find such a strong preference for introversion (89%). Oh, I’m not surprised I’m introverted - I’ve known that since the first day of kindergarten when I was terrified and overwhelmed by spending three hours in a room with 29 other five-year olds. But I was a little nonplussed by the high degree of preference this test indicated.

Then I started reading Quiet, by Susan Cain. It’s a fascinating study of introversion - how this personality characteristic develops, the way it’s viewed in different societies, and how it can be beneficial in life and in the workplace. It will come as no surprise to most of you that America is a society which values the extrovert - people with the kind of gregarious, up and at ‘em personalities we associate with leaders and winners. Introverts often are made to feel like the last ones picked for the team.

It’s been comforting to recognize myself in Cain’s descriptions. “Introverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while they wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions."

You could easily insert my name at the beginning of every one of those sentences.

Cain defines introversion not as shyness (the fear of social disapproval or humiliation) but as a “preference for environments that are not overstimulating.” Which helps me understand why it’s so tiring for me to be in crowded places like airports or concert halls or amusement parks.

But the subtitle of this book - The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking - is the key to what I’m finding most interesting.  I’ve internalized the impression that being introverted meant weakness, at least in terms of social and intellectual accomplishment. But Cain’s book debunks that theory. Not only does she talk about some very powerful and accomplished introverts - Albert Einstein, Rosa Parks, Bill Gates, Marie Curie, and Warren Buffett to name a few- she also highlights numerous ways that the characteristics shared by many introverts can be extremely valuable assets in any setting. How deep thinking, focused attention, and quiet strength can make a huge difference in everything from social justice to rocket science.

Ghandi (another famous introvert!) once said, "In a gentle way you can shake the world."  I doubt if I’ll be doing any world shaking, but it’s good to know that I don’t have to apologize for being quiet anymore.

The Man

Dan would be "the man" at our house. Dan is a colleague of my husband’s who can do absolutely anything related to home construction. And I do mean anything.

Even though our new house was just about as move-in ready as you could ask for, we decided to do a few home improvements before we moved in. Jim sat down with Dan and mapped out a plan, they spent a boatload of money at Home Depot, and we were in business.

So far, Dan has put in electricity for a ceiling fan, raised the dropped ceiling in the basement to accomadate one too-tall entertainment center, built a gate for our deck to keep Magic and Molly from tearing off after a squirrel, installed a water heater and a new humidifier on the furnace, and is now in the process of constructing a full bathroom in the basement.

What did I tell you? He is The Man.

With all these various and sundry projects, it’s been great to have one person as a point of contact. Dan has some helpers he calls upon, and if he doesn’t have the access to do something, he invariably knows someone who does. Without Dan and his expertise, we would have been searching websites for contractors, not knowing who we were getting.

I know a few other guys like Dan who have a gift (and believe me, it is a gift!) for home construction and repair. Having a business with one point of contact - a home energy audit franchise - is invaluable in getting all your “homework” accomplished efficiently and effectively.

We’re lucky we found Dan.

Coffee and Conversation, Blogger Style

Although I don’t consider myself a social animal, I’ve never had too much difficulty making friends. I can usually suss out a peer group pretty quickly, and because of my quiet good nature it’s fairly easy to find someone sympatico in any crowd. It doesn’t hurt that I enjoy listening to other people's stories. Almost everyone likes to talk about themselves, to share their personal stories of triumph and tragedy, and I’m truly interested in hearing them. That’s probably one reason I love the new Conversations Over Coffee series at All Things Girl magazine. It gives me an opportunity to “meet” some fascinating women and hear a little bit of their story.

This morning I’m excited to sharing some virtual coffee and conversation with one of my favorite bloggers, Angie Mizzell, who talks about everything from birthdays to bike rides and tells us how she set herself free from a career that no longer fulfilled her and set out on the path to define her own life.

Pull up a chair, pour a fresh cup of coffee, and join us.

Putting On My Dancing Shoes, Or How Ugly Shoes Are Saving My Life

I’ve barely been able to walk for the past three weeks, and if you thought moving house was difficult, try doing it with a bum foot. In one of those weird twists of fate, about a week before we moved my left foot starting hurting. I first noticed it when I walked the dogs one morning, just a little twinge on the anterior instep. With all the hauling and stair-climbing, it got worse and worse until I finally decided it would be smart to have it professionally evaluated.

“I think you may have a little stress fracture,” the PA at urgent care told me. She provided me with one of those handy-dandy black booties, and sent me on my way with a referral to an ortho.

We moved that weekend (more hauling and lots of stair climbing), and by Monday my foot was absolutely killing me. I was literally crying with pain. I scheduled myself in with the ortho, and was surprised to hear that my problems were not related to a fracture at all.

“Your big toe is malformed,” he told me. “It’s probably because of your flat feet, but you’ve got a lot of arthritis in there and bone spurs all over your foot."

This was all news to me. I didn’t even know I had flat feet.

The medical name for this condition is called Hallux Rigidus, a condition where the big toe (hallux) doesn’t flex properly when you walk, leading to development of arthritis, bone spurs, and pain with walking.

Lots of it.

He injected cortisone into the area (which did absolutely nothing), gave me a prescription for pain pills, pain cream, and advised me to get some shoes specially designed for the condition.

Well, this all coincided with my grandson’s first visit to Michigan, so I was a little pre-occupied. I continued limping along (literally) and suffering, dragging behind everybody everywhere we went with my halting baby-sized steps.

Yesterday I decided it was time to shop for new shoes - especially since I couldn’t even get any of my old shoes on. So I did some internet research and determined which shoes were recommended for this condition. Then I drove out to Hershey Shoes where I spent a weeks wages on two pair of shoes.

I started wearing them. All the time.

And lo, miracle of miracles, the pain and swelling has started to diminish. It still hurts a bit, but as long as I’m wearing those shoes I can walk at almost a normal gait and speed.

The trick is I have to wear the shoes ALL THE TIME. My inner hillbilly -the one who kicks of her shoes the minute she gets inside the house -is not happy.

But the woman who needs to walk her dogs twice a day and go up and down flights of stairs multiple times of day and who would love love love to do a Walk At Home exercise session with Leslie Sansone - well, she’s grudgingly accepted the fact that The Ugly Shoes are a necessary evil.

So, thanks Orthaheel and New Balance for giving me hope that I might walk normally again.

Who knew that a pair of shoes could be such life savers?

The Sunday Salon: Falling Through Space

I’m not really falling through space. In fact, I’m sitting at my desk watching the eastern sky turn all kinds of rosy pink as the sun begins to rise on this chilly fall morning. Awake at 5 am today, I surrendered to the mental monkeys tumbling around in my head and got out of bed, pulled on a sweater and made a beeline for the coffeepot. First cup firmly in hand, I curled up on the couch to finish reading Falling Through Space, a slim paperback volume I uncovered on my bookshelf while packing up books for our move. Subtitled “the journals of Ellen Gilchrist,” the book (published in 1987) is really more of an extended essay, a slightly stream of consciousness rambling about life and writing and being a woman. I can’t recall if I’ve ever read any of Gilchrist’s books - one novel and three collections of short stories are mentioned on the back cover - but I’m always keen to read the thoughts of women who write, especially Southern women who write.

I like Gilchrist’s easygoing, meandering style in this book, which she divides into three sections: Origins, Influences, and Work. Clearly a woman of spirit and spunk, Gilchrist was born on the bayou, and deeply influenced by it’s history and natural rhythms. Yet she has “moved around” all her life, she says, “going to different schools, living in different houses, shedding old roles, assuming new ones.” Picking up and moving, “tearing up a perfectly nice comfortable life and going off to live somewhere else... is as natural to me as staying in one place is to other people."

Well, that couldn’t be more different from my experience, as I am certainly one of those people to whom staying in one place is “natural.”

But here is a thought - “nothing in the long history of our species has prepared us to be comfortable,” Gilchrist says. “When life becomes comfortable for an artist the energy stops. Being comfortable is so boring it makes us drink and take drugs and bet on football games. Anything for a little excitement."

It seems to me there are many levels of “comfort,” and for each of us - artist or not - we need to find the one that suits us best. Long ago I accepted the fact that in order to live I needed the safety of routine, that taken too far out of my familiar environment, out of my “comfort zone,” I was uneasy. All my energy then went toward keeping the fear at bay, rather than to the work that needed doing. I don’t need to go searching for excitement because so often I find it in the pages of a book, in the poignancy of a Chopin nocturne, the depths of a Monet painting.

The rosy glow of the eastern sky early on a crisp autumn morn.

I’m feeling pretty comfortable this morning, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.

How about you?