…I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst.
-(Bossypants, 2011) Tina Fey
The above is somewhat taken out of a specific context, because the general statement is more applicable to me often enough.
I was and am at core a very introverted soul. That said, I have an empathetic tendency with certain people that I engage with, yet am by default driven by rather cold, calculated kind of objective logic. When you couple that with a very theatrical extroverted layer I’ve crafted over the years in a manner very much out of the quote above, it has resulted in exactly what you might expect from people:
That dude cray.
People that meet me in public social events rarely if ever guess there is any introversion to me (some folks who have known me for years are still not convinced any actually exists, but is something I claim to confuse them), and people who meet me under scenarios where my introversion and disconnect are in play are usually totally blinkered when I go full-on energy-tornado.
I’m still trying to figure out how to best calibrate the two sides. Sometimes that is fun. Sometimes its damage control. Either way it usually makes for a good story.