An Introverted Birthday, Please.

What’s your letter combo?  What’s your number?  Which Disney Princess are you?  There are oodles of personality tests and quizzes out there, and I’ve been known to fill out surveys and questions to determine where I fall.  If you’re familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (designed by two women, by the way!), I am typed as ESFP, or Extrovert, Sensing, Feeling, Perception.

Did you catch that?  Extrovert.  Yes, I, Maggie, am typed as an extrovert.  Hard to believe these days.  For what it’s worth, I was just barely tipped into the extrovert category when I took the test a few years back, so maybe that makes me more of an ambivert, or a closeted introvert, though I’m certain I’ll always be an omnivore.

But I digress.  I have found in this current phase of Good Chaos, that I have sunk into more introverted ways of balancing the demands of children and my mental well-being.  When our eldest (nearly five years old) can talk your face off until it is dripping and gooey on the grocery store floor, I seek quite spaces.  When our middle child (just chalked up the big three) is explosively fierce in her attitude and impressive in overall meltdown volume, I start the countdown to when bedtime will bring the calm and quiet for my mind.  And when our baby continues the family trend of being hungry ALL THE TIME, although bubbly and smiley and ever so sweet, I must plunge myself into time that is mine and mine alone.

My Current Spirit Animal

Last year’s birthday celebration was awesome, as Brad and I celebrated our 30th in the best way possible, hosting our Nerdy Thirty Party.  We had amazing friends, we gorged ourselves on sumptuous foods, we required costumes, and ended the evening with a rip-roaring bonfire and loud stories.  But can I tell you something?  On my actual birthday last year, I abandoned all responsibilities, avoided contact with the human population, and just had a day of introverted quiet and calm and no-one-bothering-me-because-I-will-explode-if-I-am-unable-to-recooperate-from-the-noise-of-my-day-to-day-lifestyle.

It is my birthday month now, and I thought I’d give a little fair warning:  I’m asking for another Introverted Birthday.  Please.

I love birthday messages and well wishes, but I won’t answer the phone calls.  For one, I usually toss my phone in the bottom of my purse while I go on my introverted adventure.  And secondly, I Do Not Like Talking on the Phone, Sam I Am.  there is a societal assumption that women just love phones and talking on them and spilling their guts over the receiver, but I am a huge exception to said assumption.  I already struggle with phone calls while the kids are around – anyone else’s kids turn into Espresso-Laiden Monkeys once you hold a phone up to your ear?  Seriously.  They can smell me on the phone from another room and come running with all their volumes and loudness and dire emergencies of misplaced toys and socks that are twisted.  So when it is a day for me to call my very own, I do not wish to spend it tied to my phone.  I like to spend it eating food with both hands, drinking coffee while still hot, smelling air filled with the sounds of nature and nothing else, and browsing stores instead of rushing through them before the next feeding is needed.

…just for one day.

I write this post because I am suspicious I am not the only one that loves introverted birthdays.  Do you share in this need?  Maybe you want to spend the day with just a few of your most cherished people, or you want to go to the movies by yourself, or you just don’t want to have to talk, but instead soak up the sounds around you.  I’m sure my desires will change once we’ve left the triple threat stage of Preschooler, Threenanger, and Hungry Baby, but for the next handful of years, I’m certain an Introverted Birthday is just what I’ll be hoping for as I blow out the candles.

What type are you?  How do you celebrate the day you breathed your first?

Still an omnivore,

~M