The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Mitch Wagner:

By the way, I know two sf writers who seem to be genuine extroverts, Joe Haldeman and Tad Williams, and I am rather amazed that they manage to lead these Jekyll-and-Hyde lives consisting of houses full of guests, regular parties, friends and family and business associates calling on the phone every five minutes -- along with long hours every day spent alone in a room, writing.

I'm told that Neil Gaiman is the same way.

I guess my amazement comes from overthinking the matter, thinking that people have to be either introverts OR extroverts. Tad and Joe seem to be extreme extroverts and extreme introverts at different times in the same day, every day.

I was talking to a friend the other day, he's got a business trip coming up and he will be staying with a mutual friend in New York while he is there. "Couldn't get the company to spring for a hotel room, eh?" I said, and he said, no, he prefers to stay with a friend. Again, my reaction was amazement: if I'm traveling on business to a city where I have friends, I'm happy to see them, I'll even extend my trip a day or two to spend more time with them -- but I'm grateful to have my own little space to retreat to each night, my hotel room, and I'm grateful to be in a line of work where that's one of the perqs.

We had an extra room put on the house in 2001 (dotcom money *sigh*) and my wife and I had a disagreement on whether the room should have a door on it. I said: yes, door, she said no, no door. The room is a sunroom that does double-duty as a guest room -- daybed has a trundle, pulls out into two comfortable beds -- and I know that when I'm a guest in someone else's home I would much rather be in a room with a door that closes.

I stayed as a guest in a friend's home the summer before last, on a sofabed in their finished basement. My friends did up a corner of that finished basement as an exercise room for the husband. I woke up to this odd SWISHING sound -- couldn't figure it out -- sat up and peered over to see the man sitting on an exercise bicycle, pedalling away. That was weird for me and a little bit uncomfortable -- I like to be alone until I've at least had a chance to wash up.

A year or two before that, same friends, same sofabed, it was a big weekend-long high school reunion party my friends were having. I got the sofabed, and three 11-year-old boys were sacked out in sleeping bags on the floor. I tiptoed downstairs quietly in the wee hours of the morning to avoid waking them, and then was awakened myself a few hours later by my roommates having a brisk intellectual disagreement about something called "Pokemon" that I had never heard of before.

Like Patrick, I love public speaking. It's an incredible rush. I did a radio program on blogging over the summer -- the other bloggers who were guests talked about their blogs about being incredibly nervous. One of them was so nervous he threw up. To me, this was totally alien thought. I've read many times that public speaking is the biggest fear of most Americans, often topping even the fear of death. To this I say: huh? Fear of public speakign is as alien to me as the character on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" who is morbidly afraid of bunny rabbits. I was excited and walking on air in the days leading up to and after the radio show.

I was somewhat nervous when I chaired a presentation at a conference for high-level IT managers at the CIO and corporate senior VP level. This had more to do with my being afraid that I wasn't prepared rather than fear of public speaking per se.

Arthur D. Hlavaty:
>>Mitch: It's not that introverts don't like other people; it's just that paying attention, and going along with the small talk that is supposed to define one as liking other people, is a strain.<<

Two points of disagreement here:

First of all, I think the word "strain" is wrong. I would simply describe it as "effort."

And I'm somewhat baffled by the expression "small talk," carrying with it the inference that the conversation is trivial or unimportant. When I ask you how you are, and how is your family, and how is your work going and are you enjoying it, I am genuinely interested in the answers to those questions, not just lobbing a conversational tennis ball back and forth in lieu of real conversation.

Rauch addresses the erroneous perception that introverts dislike other people, or are shy. Neither is true of me, and it is not true of many people. Anyone who met me knows that I'm not shy, I'll just get right in your face and say hello. I think other people are great, I'm pleased as punch to live on a planet with five billion of them. I love going to computer trade shows, the occasional science fiction convention. And I love parties -- or, at least, I had a great time at the last party I went to a couple of years ago. I love holidays with a houseful of guests, although it always seems to work out to be SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE that's full.

And yet I find being with other people is tiring, while being alone is energizing.

Another element of Rauch's article that has the ring of truth to me: being with other people is acting. That's not literally true, but it's a good metaphor. For a gregarious extrovert like me to socialize with other people is something similar to what an actor does when he dons another persona and gets up onstage. It's not entirely the same thing, because to say that a person is acting is to say that person is dissembling, behaving in a false manner, and I am not doing those things when I am with other people. (Or no moreso than anyone dissembles or behaves falsely when around others. No, your pants don't make you look fat. No, I don't think anyone noticed your fly was open.) The person I am when I am with other people is me -- but the person I am when I am alone is more me.

The person I am when I am alone with my wife is also more me -- I'd say it's as much me as the person I am when I'm alone -- but it's a DIFFERENT VERSION of me. Even Julie is never going to see the person I am when I'm alone, because that person ceases to exist when I enter a room with another person, or another person enters the same room as me, or even when the phone rings. It's like trying to view an individual quark, which the nuclear physicists tell us is both theoretically and practically impossible.

Excellent story. The only reason I never did something that stupid in high school is because I was too stupid to think of it.

Turned out to be my fault that I was still seeing only excerpts -- I was using NewsMonster incorrectly.

NewsMonster runs on Mozilla, by the way, so Mac users who want to give it a try, can do so.

Thanks, Patrick. Although for some reason I'm still not seeing the entirety of entries in my news aggregator, just excerpts. This may be a problem with my news aggregator -- I'm currently trying out NewsMonster, which works as a plug-in to Mozilla, and I'm not yet sure that I'm using it right.

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