I've been introverted my entire life.
The way introverts experience the world is completely foreign to extroverts. It's impossible to explain it. It's stressful to not have extroverts grasp that. It's also stressful to live in an extroverted society, which we do.
A lot of lawyers, although I doubt anywhere near 50%, are introverted. That surprises people, and it may in particular surprise people that their own lawyer may be introverted. Being introverted doesn't mean that you can't interact with people, even in a very public and effective fashion.
Added to this is the phenomenon of "Type A" personalities, who are competitive and achieving, for lack of a better way to put it. I have no idea if most Type A personalities are extroverts, but I'll bet they are. It's always universally assumed that lawyers, particularly trial lawyers, are Type A personalities, and I'll bet most are, at least the trial lawyers. but not everyone is. I'm not. I don't like competition at all and never intentionally get myself into most types of competition, at least public competition.1 Knowing that I like history and know a bunch of stuff in general, people will try to draw me into competition or even force me into ones if I'm in a setting where I can't avoid it, which I absolutely despise. "You're on my team!" I'll hear and we're off into a game of specified trivia or something, which I don't want to be in.2 I once had this occur with somebody betting on me following a bunch of "no, no, no" comments from me, all to no avail.
More than one I've been talking with some other lawyer or professional who will say to me "we're both Type A personalities. . . ".
No, I'm not.
So why do I bring this all up?
I recently have had some legal matters which featured a crop of older lawyers. Lawyers older than me. Guys who really ought to be retired. I heard at one of these things that "lawyers who retire are unhappy".
These guys love the association of other lawyers.
Recently it occurs to me that I've never really liked that. I don't pal around with big bunches of lawyers. I have some lawyers who are my friends, but I don't call up other lawyers at random to go to lunch, or things like that. Indeed recently the abuse that lawyers do to society and individuals has come into sharp focus to me, in part I guess, as I'm close enough to the end of my career that I don't have to pretend that every legal cause is somehow ennobling. I think lawyers who have the attitude expressed above have it, as they love hanging around with other lawyers and, as odd as it may seem, they like the forced captivity of witnesses and deponents as they love the game aspect of the law, and just like being around with people they don't know, even if those people really don't want to be around them. I've actually seen lawyers go on yapping at somebody in a deposition for the obvious reason that they're enjoying talking to the witness, who if examined closely is in agony.
Indeed, I bet they don't even realize that's the case.
Okay, again, why do I bring this up?
Well, first of all, I'm supposed to go to an event this week. Well, today. It's out of town. But I have a lot of work to do, and I can't afford the time, and beyond that, I just don't want to go.
I just don't want to.
I don't want to sit around with the lawyers all day, and I don't want to go to the dinner. I don't want to engage in small talk about the law, or tell war stories, or anything like that.
I shouldn't have signed up for it, but there are CLE credits, and I need those.
So yesterday, I told my long suffering spouse that I wasn't going.
Then the hard sell came on.
"You need to go". "You need to keep the networks".
My wife and I, at this stage of my career, have substantially different ideas about the near term future. I've come closer to death that I generally admit within the last couple of years, and this past week two people I know who were just a few years older than me suddenly died. A woman I went to law school with I recently learned passed away four years ago, at age 58. I really don't expect to be like those lawyers in their 70s, keeping on as (annoying) happy warriors until they die in their late 70s or early 80s. Why would I?
They could probably answer that, but I can't even fathom it.
But my wife is an extrovert, and she can't conceive of a situation in which a person doesn't want to go to work every day, or even retire. And she worries about finances, which of course is her absolute right.
So, the big push.
A lot of extroverts regard introverts not wanting to do things as something needing to be addressed. It's sort of, in their minds, like kindergarteners who don't want to go to that first day of school. They just need a little push.
And there's a lot of truth in that. Sometimes introverts do need a push to go to something they'll like.
Sometimes, they need to be able to be left alone, or just with their families.
I generally work six days a week, sometimes seven. I'm in the introvert category that needs to have some downtime. And, quite frankly, to be pushed to go to something by those who can't go themselves, due to other commitments, is agony. My first question whenever I'm invited to something is to my wife, and that question is "are you going?" More often than not, it's "no, but you need to".
I really don't.
And she doesn't grasp that, nine times out of ten, when I go and enjoy these things, it's because she went with me, which she very rarely does anymore. It was her company I enjoyed, not the attendance at the event.
I tend to yield on these things, and we'll see about this one. But, for those close to introverts, or married to them, knowing that we live in an extremely extroverted and competitive society, first do no harm.
"Don't make things worse for me" is sometimes my reply, which is not appreciated at all.
In other words, taking somebody whose brain is wired for hard on full bore activity in public, and for whom there are no casual conversations whatsoever, and pushing them into having their brain work overtime, is not always a favor.
Footnotes
1. I will participate in some sorts of competitions, but they're mostly ones that are really individual and I'm basically competing with myself. In terms of team sports, I really only like baseball, which is a team sport that has such individual positions. It's almost like a series of individual competitions. The man up to bat is really an individual.
I detest football. I find soccer boring. I do like rugby, however.
If I'm in an individual competition, I like to do well, but I'm not upset with myself if I don't. I will note that highly competitive people, however, can make even individual competitions absolutely miserable by introducing their personal competitiveness into it. Some competitive people make things into competitions that don't need to be.
As an example of the latter, two of my highly competitive colleagues are this way. On the rare occasions I've been bird hunting with them, "who has the best dog" becomes some sort of stupid aggravating competition and during football and basketball seasons endless arguments about adopted teams go on and on, in a public setting, on the presumed assumption that everyone likes to watch these verbal jousts.
For that matter, they both like to argue and will engage in verbal sparring on various topics just for sport, and again where everyone else can't avoid them. Some time ago, I actually intervened to stop their arguments on religion as they were outright insulting to two people here who are members of minoritarian religions.
Oddly, I've found that a lot of former soldiers who really liked the military have the same mindset and don't follow team sports. I think I know the reason why, but I'll deal with it in some other thread.
2. I've actually had "we'll play trivia" thrown out as an educement to attend something, which nearly guarantees that I'll try to avoid it. It's not that I mind trivia topics, or trivial pursuit as a game, but I don't want to compete with people out of a close circle who don't care if I win or lose. I really hate being made the presumed champion who will carry a team to victory as its stress I really don't need.