Some people, I understand, feel at home wherever they go. They fluidly and fully occupy space from one stride to another on a downtown sidewalk. Some people comfortably inhabit whole continents. For these expansive types, the self can span acres and hectares. It can fling its arms across wide avenues and happily establish itself in the center of an otherwise empty stage. I, on the other hand, could chronicle my life thus far in terms of truly self-sized spaces. Tree houses. Train compartments. The space just behind the top of the narrow staircase in my grandfather’s old house. Café corner tables. Beds lodged in corners of a succession of studio apartments. Remote library carrels.I've never found myself particularly drawn to confined spaces, but I do find great need to retreat at the end of the day into a space where I can be completely alone. Furthermore, I find extended periods of social contact (two hours is plenty, thank you) sufficiently draining as to require a period of silent solitude, whereby I can listen to music, read or – when applicable – write. Perhaps this is why blogging is such an appealing medium; it's an instant medium of solitary entertainment. I can write without needing a pre-ordained topic of interest: it's writing in real-time. Pelish concludes quite well: "While the introvert can certainly make forays into the broad and unsheltered social landscape, she really must eventually retreat into an alcove large enough for a single consciousness alone, in order to, yes, collect the evidence of her own subjective being. Otherwise she may cease to exist. Think of Crusoe without his cave during the rainy season." Read the whole thing.
The introvert, Jung explains in his essay “Psychological Types,” can’t find a foothold in the objects outside herself. Jung, whom we have to thank for the term, named it quite aptly. That is, the introvert’s world is founded on folding inward. Unlike the classic extrovert, who “denies himself in his complete dispersion among objects” (and here I envision the extrovert as a sort of babbling brook frothing happily over each and every boulder in its social course), the introvert “will follow his ideas…inwardly, not outwardly.” The thing is, introverts feel as if they’re slowly ceasing to exist in any substantive way when all their mental energy is spread thinly across the surface of sociability.
Facebook | 
Twitter | 
Tumblr
The introvert's penchant for confined spaces
INTROVERTS AND CONFINED SPACES: In one of the many great articles I've read lately at the intelligent-discourse-compendium known as 3QuarksDaily, Alyssa Pelish explores her penchant for small, confined spaces, drawing comparisons with the lost, island-dwelling protagonist of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.