Realising I’m Extroverted

It can sometimes take an incredible amount of time to discover something about yourself that anyone else would be able to spot almost straight away.

Realising that I wasn’t actually an introvert at all has kind of changed my approach to life for the better recently, so I thought I would share how this realisation came about, possibly to also help those who don’t realise they’re going through the same thing.

Why I thought I was an Introvert

I think this probably started in school. When I got home, while others would be meeting up or talking online, I would mainly be doing things by myself, lost in my own world. I didn’t feel lonely or like I was missing out at all.

I was very socially awkward around people I didn’t know, especially girls, and found smalltalk incredibly stressful and difficult.

Things did get massively better at university, but then covid happened and it destroyed a lot of the progress I had made previously, making me feel more or less back to where I was before as I started to work in the real world.

All this time I had been very good at building my own world and finding things to do by myself. I made YouTube videos by myself, started a really active blog, played video games and started to study Mandarin Chinese as well. It made ‘introvert’ a very easy label to put on myself.

Why I Misunderstood Myself

I think looking back it’s quite obvious what happened. I didn’t really feel that much of a need to talk or meet up with friends online or after school as I had already seen them all day, and also had really terrible Internet, making games not very fun, the terrible microphones didn’t help either. I did also go to afterschool clubs anyway, so it’s not like I never saw anyone after school what-so-ever.

Despite being extremely awkward with strangers, I was always very comfortable and relaxed around friends, almost always having a good time and being willing to just be myself. The difference was like night and day.

An important point to make is that being an extrovert doesn’t make you automatically charismatic and natural, it just usually helps make you that way. You can still be awkward and extroverted at the same time, or just stressed by meeting new people.

Part of the problem which made this realisation even harder for me to find out was that I was just given social situations all the time for pretty much all my life through school and university. I never had to work hard to find and create them. Since I had social life covered already, of course I would spend my free time doing other creative things that I enjoyed instead. It made me believe that the things I chose to do for myself were what defined me, but I completely forgot that for all its problems, I did have a great time at school and university socially too, and that I could still be myself there.

Realising

The realisation for me came after starting a job for a couple years working from home and feeling like something was always missing, like I was lonely but didn’t really know what to do about it.

I think I was just keeping myself going because I was still spending time with my wife and doing odd things here and there, but never really felt especially fulfilled or like life was what I wanted it to be.

For reasons I don’t want to get into, my wife returned to her own country for three weeks and I was left in a position where I would be just by myself.

I really didn’t want to be alone, so put an extreme amount of effort into arranging things and getting back in touch with people, and I loved it. It was a really happy fun time, and it actually made me realise that I didn’t want to stop living like that, and that this was what I was missing the entire time.

What to do about it?

The Internet and offline hobbies can be so interesting that you don’t necessarily always notice your social life and social circle shrinking until the change is quite dramatic and you don’t really know what to do.

Unfortunately your friends are in the same boat too, and may be at different stages themselves. They might be lost in their own world, or so thoroughly busy because they made this discovery about themselves long ago that they don’t really have time for you.

The answer is of course simple, you have to organise things and be responsible for your social life, but it’s much harder to do in practice.

Obviously the best approach will vary from person to person. I usually find it easier to fire things into group chats as chances are a few people will be free instead of looking for one on one’s, but chances are you will have to do both. It’s also worth joining regular clubs too as even if you are awkward, a good club will make you feel comfortable, and if they don’t, you at least know you won’t be coming back a week later anyway.

It’s also worth mentioning that it is absolutely the most difficult right towards the start, but as long as you keep up with things, it should only get easier. I say this as if I know everything but honestly I’m still figuring it out for myself too.

Final thoughts

Terms like introvert and extrovert are really unhelpful in general. While they are quick to help other people broadly understand the lifestyle you choose, nobody is fully one thing or the other.

Like I really don’t think there is anyone alive who would enjoy never seeing another human again in their life, and equally I don’t think there is anyone who would enjoy always having someone else right next to them until they die.

Contentment and general happiness should be the state of emotion we get used to and feel the most familiar with, so if that isn’t happening to you then I definitely recommend trying to change that wherever you fall on the introvert/extrovert spectrum.