Fix things Friday

[luzula]

In the last two weeks I have:

- Gone to a meeting for functionaries at the anti-nazi protest.
- Made and hung up a tree-top banner promoting the anti-nazi protest.
- Protested against nazis.
- Taken down a tree-top banner I helped some peace activists hang up a few weeks ago. The weather hadn't treated it well and I wanted to clean up after myself.
- Called new union members and then held an introductory meeting for them.
- Written and sent out October newsletter for the union.
- Gone to local union meeting for university employees.
- Put up some stuff on the website for environmental organization.
- Eeeemailed a lot.

I really enjoy holding introductory meetings for new union members. You get to meet new people who have sought out the union and some of them are enthusiastic and want to do things and have ideas (although not all of those actually come through with it). And you can tell them how the organization works and try to make them feel welcome.

Enjoying meetings probably means I am not an introvert? I actually get energy from them, if they're constructive meetings. OTOH I also enjoy being alone and have been completely alone without meeting anyone for at least a week straight, with no problems. Hmm. Maybe I have characteristics of both.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

You're an AMBIVERT!

Congrats. Are your eeeeeemailings associated with teaching, or your community service, or fandom, or?

[luzula]

The eeeemailing is meant to cover all the other small things I did that are connected to my union or my environmental activism that feel like they are not big enough to merit their own line in the post. The last two weeks that includes things like: setting a date for a union board meeting, emailing the paid elected union officials to get their opinions on how their work is going, weighing in on whether we should use a particular news service to send out our press releases in the environmental org, fact-checking a bit of text on Swedish forests that a European environmental org wrote for a report (it was not correct), talking and emailing with someone who's trying to save a threatened forest to see if I can help in some way. Etc. Like, I can't write down every single thing that I do, so I figure that category can cover the leftover stuff...because most of it is done via email. : )

[desireearmfeldt]

Re introversion and meetings: I've always found I like & am energized by interacting with people, even if it's a group of people, in a context where the interaction is focused around content/tasks. A play rehearsal, a working meeting, a live-roleplaying game... And when it's either people I already know, or a project where the same people are going to be interacting repeatedly and getting to know each other. It's unfocused schmoozing/getting-to-know-you with strangers I find both intimidating and draining (and also, less interesting).

Perhaps you feel similarly?

(I sometimes think of this as being an introvert who finds people the most interesting thing in the universe. Though I'm also kind of a curmudgeon, in that I'm easily irritated/frustrated by people, and that can be simultaneously engaging and draining. But I think that's actually a separate effect from the question of whether interacting with people, in general, is energizing or draining.)

[luzula]

Interesting analysis! Yes, it's true that I am not fond of unfocused situations where you have to small-talk with strangers, like parties where you only know a few people.