Cusp

Being someone on the cusp of introversion and extroversion is always a tricky thing to navigate. I was informed that a visiting colleague from our Germany office was staying at the same hotel this weekend, and perhaps I wanted to hang out with her. My natural instinct was to run for the hills and enjoy my alone time. Then when I met her in the reception area I almost burst into cabaret-style show hands and started with some energetic conversations and ideas for sightseeing. Only later did I then want to find a solitary crawlspace and hide in it, which was nothing personal at all towards her.

I’m becoming much more introverted with age, with some latent bursts of extreme gregariousness. Which can fade quicker than a light switching off. Is this a natural path that happens to many of us, or some other curmudgeonly factor?

Armchair psychology welcome.