Walkers Don't Talk, or why this blog is so hard to spell

As I've mentioned before, this blog is largely about what happens when I get a sandwich. Most of these posts started out as lunch break scribbles, and in fact, the whole blog started because I went out one day to get a sandwich.

As I sat alone in the food court, enjoying my spicy Chick-fil-a chicken sandwich, I overheard a young woman describing all the colleagues she didn’t like. And I heard her say about one woman, “She’s not a bad person, she just has no personality.”

I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!?! If a person is quiet, or withdrawn, or hard to get to know or figure out, it’s a sure sign that person is soulless and empty on the inside.

I know because I am one of those people. I’m pretty much a zombie. I see it in my dead, dark eyes when I look in the mirror. Right now I hear the echo in my mindless skull.

We all know Walkers don't talk. The Walking Dead, Sunday nights on AMC.

I’m not a bad person. I’m just impossible to like.

There is a word for people like me, the real-life "walkers" who shamble about in your midst with their creepy blank stares and obvious lack of charisma. The word is "introverts."

Introverts are widely believed to have no personality. Plenty of people have said that about me, I’m sure. Now, you might expect me to say that introverts actually do have personality, in spite of popular opinion, but I won’t say that. Because I don’t know what a personality is.

Food Court Girl likes to gossip about coworkers. Is that personality? Comedian Guy does nothing but tease you all the time. Is that personality? Oversharing Man likes to talk about his traumatic childhood on first meeting you. Team Mom isn’t your mom but likes to talk like she is. Sweetest Lady in the World will send flowers if you’re in the hospital and OMG guys did you see the last episode of Lost???

I know, Lost was a long time ago, but you get my point.

"Do you have, like, any personality at all?"

"Do you have a brain at all?... And can I eat it?"

Personality is a bit like soul, heart or mind – we are all pretty sure we have one, but when pressured to describe it, we can’t. At all. But we sure can presume things about other people.

I love conspiracy theories involving the paranormal. Lady Gaga is my hero. I’m a passionate, liberal feminist. I’m a good listener, compassionate and patient with people. And I think, if there is such a thing as a personality, I must have one. But not much of it will shine among the cubicles - certainly not enough to inspire you to invite me out to get a sandwich.

Not everyone hates introverts. Some people pity us for the sad state of personal repression that is our every waking moment. Introverts respond to this pity with a blank stare, or perhaps an uncomfortable grin or a slightly raised eyebrow.

"Poor walkers. They have a soul, they're just afraid to
show it, because they think they'll be judged."

See, for non-introverts (we introverts call them "extraverts," they call themselves "normal people") talking is like a roiling white-water river of unobstructed self expression that surges robustly from their brain and gushes from their vocal cords. For introverts, talking is more like Dr. Livingstone trying to make his way through the whole African jungle with just a machete. We have to hack through a dense forest of thoughts and a thick undergrowth of feelings just to say a few words. No wonder we look lost.

When two introverts discover a common interest,
they may ask, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

For extraverts, that must sound outrageously laborious and pointless, considering you could just be more river-y and surge right over those trees like the Hoover Dam just collapsed. But for introverts, the way extraverts think is chaotic and disorganized, resulting in sweeping oversights and thoughtlessly offensive remarks. Believe me, for every introvert that has been thought boring, an extravert has been thought tasteless.

I'm disgusting? Pardon me, sir, but your manners are disgusting.

I'm not afraid to be myself. In fact, I quite enjoy myself. But for me and other introverts, talking isn't the best (and certainly isn't the only) way to enjoy ourselves. So I started this blog - a place for me to enjoy being me in ways that are more natural for me, and a place where other introverts might enjoy hearing from one of their kind, on anything that strikes her fancy. This blog is a way for me to connect more authentically with other people, a way for me to "put myself out there" to be known by people, since talking just doesn't typically do it for me.

Excuse me. I mean, since walkers don't talk.

The Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator, which operates on the premise that personalities are a thing and everyone has one, identifies me as an INFJ - Introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging. (Each of these descriptors has an opposite - extraverted, sensing, thinking, perceiving - resulting in 16 different combinations.) For me, the introverted and intuitive categories are the most pronounced.

"We are Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers,
and we posit that personality is a thing."

The "intuitive" piece means I'm interested in what's abstract and theoretical, making me even less fun at parties. I see things more as patterns than unique experiences, and I put a lot of faith in those patterns. I'm more interested in what something signifies than it what it actually accomplishes. Ultimately it will accomplish what it signifies - I know this because that is the pattern. See?

Your plan is going to fail miserably. But you won't
die, because you never do.

And so, adding the intuitive to the introverted moves me further and further away from "normal" in a culture that defines positive, outspoken, go-getters as attractive. These people are ambitious, fun-loving, and have "good people skills." People who want to stop you in the middle of your plan, write an essay about that plan's implications, and then relax by Facebooking their friends about critical essays regarding Lady Gaga are considered negative, nit-picking and antisocial. Also just weird.

Well, I'm not interested in proving my value to anyone. I've spent my life smiling like a maniac to prove that I'm not brooding or scared, which is what people assume when I don't talk. But here at Introverted Intuitive, I'm just being my introverted intuitive self. And I'm not ashamed to say, my brain trumps the real world every time.

Did someone say brains?