Introvert Issues: Why I Weary

I'm weary. Good-weary, but weary nonetheless.Two days ago, I returned from a ten-day pilgrimage to Nashville with subsequent Tennessean stops in Franklin and Chattanooga. The journey continued onward with Georgian escapades in Watkinsville, Athens, Milledgeville, and Helen.It wasn't so much the constant moving around that wore me out. It was the people. Good people, but people nonetheless.From the Storyline conference to visits with friends, family, and fans, the last 10 days utterly exhausted me. Even upon returning to southern California two days ago, I hit the ground running with social meals and birthday gatherings and --I just needed to get away. I skipped church last night and went to a coffee shop for several hours instead. Came home and fell asleep by 8:30, woke up this morning after 9.While I was no doubt physically exhausted after a momentous conference and hundreds of miles on the road and 3-hour jet-lag, I can't help feeling my weariness stemmed more from my relational output of the last 12 days than my many hours spent on a plane or in a car or my collective lack of sleep throughout.Don't get me wrong -- the conference and the conversations with many beloved individuals were amazing. I've never met with so many different people in such a short span of time. I kept asking my introverted self, "Who am I?"It was easily my greatest return trek home in the 3 years since I exchanged that home for another.And yet I'm deeply reminded of the introvert I am. The need to recoil and retreat and recharge lest I become choked into oblivion.I need to get away from others, need to get away from you, need to miss you so that I can be fully present when I return to you.Perhaps my fellow introverts can relate.In the weeks to come, believe me, I will have plenty to say from my recent tour of the Southeast, including that momentous Storyline conference -- a conference I'm very much still processing all these days later.In the meantime, I'd love to share something with y'all. When I was home in Georgia, I ventured into the alluring painting world. Sure, I've painted with words before, but never with brushes and paint. For a first-time painter like me, I think it turned out all right.Here's a photo of my first painting. One I've now titled "Midnight Wandering":At the time, I didn't read much into my painting as my eager hands dipped into the colors and slathered all those blues browns and greens onto an empty canvas.Looking back on the painting, however, I now notice something glaring:My traveling golden trout -- he's all alone. No other fish or frogs or water foul are present.I painted "Midnight Wandering" toward the end of my Southern journey, and I was long wearied by this point of the trip. An introvert yearning to rediscover sweet solitude, even in the dead of night. Even on a once blank canvas.As much as I've grown to appreciate my life, my personality, my story -- this introverted facet of my being still frustrates me sometimes.I love people. Really, I do. There are few things I enjoy more on this earth than meals and movies and coffee with others.And yet without the solitude, that beloved connection and community fractures my soul. I've known this for 26 years, and yet I was reminded all over again my need as an introvert for lengthy recharging. Alone.And yet without the people, I am nothing. Just a lonely trout aimlessly swimming about an abandoned pool at midnight, desperate to connect with a salamander or a stork.Or just another fellow fish wandering in the dark.

Where do you fall on the extrovert-introvert spectrum? How do you "recharge"?