Alone but Not Unoccupied

Scott Hardie | August 26, 2022
I enjoyed this comedy sketch, but I resent its conflation of introversion and laziness. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be alone, and there's nothing wrong with taking a break from life to rest, but they're not at all the same thing.

Speaking as an introvert who needs time alone daily, without which I become stressed-out and irritable, I think I'm generally productive with my alone time. Some of my hobbies, like working on web sites, involve concentration that I would find impossible to do with someone talking to me. (I don't know how pair programmers get anything done.) I also do household chores and pay bills and answer emails and perform other mundane tasks. I'm still accomplishing things; I just prefer to be alone with my thoughts sometimes.

And I believe that most other introverts are the same way. There's a bias towards extroversion in our society, since the successful people in business and politics and entertainment tend to be highly extroverted, and introverts are sometimes treated as weird or useless or in need of correcting their bad habit. But consider things that quiet alone time make possible to create: Art, literature, music, architecture, engineering, scientific breakthroughs. We wouldn't have much of a civilization if all of us couldn't stand being alone to concentrate.

I have enjoyed the "It's a Southern Thing" comedy team for a while now (especially the food ranking videos), so no judgment on them, but I wonder if their bias -- being on-camera comedy performers, they are likely all extroverts -- prompted them to mistake introverts for layabouts.

What do you think?

Evie Totty | August 26, 2022
It seemed to me they were advocating resting and recharging. She went at him when he suggested Steve wasn't doing anything worthwhile.

As a side note: I am an ambivert - but I also need time to rest because I spend a lot of mental energy trying to be neurotypical.

The 24 hours of anxiety prior to an activity that has a specific time you have to be there is exhausting because with ADHD there are only two states to time: now and not now.

Remembering to ask people how have they been when you first interact so you don't appear callus. Wanting to say something related to what someone else is saying, but having to repeat what you want in your head over and over so you don't forget while paying attention to the rest of the things they are saying... ho boy.

If you get a message from someone with ADHD on your birthday - know it was a monumental effort to get that done. We've set many reminders - but if they come up while we are in the middle of something, "now" becomes "not now" and by the time it comes back around to "now", it could be 11 pm, the next day, or next week. And we curse ourselves because we don't want you to think we don't care because we forgot.

Imagine thinking you are one "forgotten special event" away from losing someone you hold dear and the mental exhaustion it causes.

I could go on and on.

But again: they seem to be advocating self care and not having to say "sorry" about it.

Scott Hardie | August 31, 2022
I hear you. I've talked to plenty of people with ADHD, ASD, and other neurological differences over the years, and I've heard all kinds of details like this. :-(

I don't think I have ADHD, but I have struggled with organization, prioritizing, and time management all of my life in other ways. Keeping every task in a single to-do list that I check constantly is the only way that I manage to stay on top of deadline-based tasks like birthday greetings, and even then, important tasks without deadlines still fall behind too often. But I'm also just plain overcommitted; freeing myself of some responsibilities would make the rest much easier.