Morning everyone. I hope you had a fabulous weekend and are ready to kick off the week. I am ready to go myself. I actually slept pretty well. No strange dreams or weird songs in my head. I’m taking it as a win. So let’s jump into the new week and see what happens. Timers set and off we go.
An interesting jump off. I like watching a group of extroverts through an introverts eyes. It always provides a good counterpoint to the constant stream of action. and can create a fun dynamic.
Monday, June 22nd: Birds chirped.
Birds chirped. Laying in bed he frowned. He could hear them. They were loud. Louder than they should be. He cracked an eye open as a breeze wafted the scent of damp grass through his window.
‘That’s right,’ he thought. He got hot in the night and opened the window a crack so he could breathe. He wasn’t certain who set the thermostat and he was certain if he changed it there would be yelling. But the heat was so oppressive in the night that he couldn’t breath let alone sleep.
‘Might not be the thermostat fault,’ he conceded. When he arrived, he couldn’t find the air vents in this room either. He didn’t look very hard as he was tired, but he suspected the room didn’t have them. He managed to get the window next to the bed open before flopping back into the bed and that was enough to let him go back to sleep.
‘And now there are the birds.’
He turned to look at the window, leaving his body mostly still so it could stay in the same super comfortable spot as much as possible. He knew that if he moved too much even just to sit up and lay back down again, that supreme comfort would be lost. The bed and blankets would cease to be his perfect cocoon and suddenly he would be just in a bed.
The slight movement gave him a view of the window. The sun was barely teasing the horizon. The sky beyond was more gray than lightened. The bush placed just outside of the window was where the bird alighted. Chirping noisily. He waited to see if it would continue.
The bird flew off in a noise explosion of displaced air and silence returned. He relaxed back into his comfortable spot. He closed his eyes. It was not yet time to get up.
‘Good,’ he thought. He was still exhausted and he knew that today would be a constant. He enjoyed seeing everyone. He loved his family dearly, but he lived alone, worked from home and was accustomed to choosing his interactions with people. Truthfully, he spaced them out. He had never been good with a lot of people all at once. They overwhelmed him. And being around people exhausted him.
It was something the bulk of his family never understood. There were a few like him, sprinkled across the gene pool but they were spread out and rarely seen. Most of his family craved loud gatherings, full houses and people. Always people. The seemed to not only enjoy but seek out a constant stream of conversation as though it was a lifeline. It energized them and recharged their batteries.
That he didn’t feel the same, get the same reaction was seen as a default, a defect. It was something to correct. He was sulking, he was anti-social, he needed to get out more.
Usually when he visited, he picked his times for when there would be the fewest people gathered. This time, that wasn’t an option. There was a big family gathering and his presence was required. He lay thee in the early morning light and knew this was the only quiet he was going to get. It was why he was willing to take the poorly ventilated back room when it was offered. There was relief from the others as it was slightly separated and tended to overheat. He decided the heat was worth the small mental space it afforded his brain. He drifted back to sleep.
Ten til Midnight 