I was at FedEx with my kid the other day, and when we left, she observed that I'm not as antisocial as I like people to believe. The gentleman in front of me in line talked to us for a while about the benefits of living in such a small community. He was friendly and voluble and in the holiday spirit, and it felt good to be smiling and passing the time in line. Once at the front of the line, I talked a bit to the clerk, who was helpful and friendly (even when he mistakenly rang up my 12-foot roll of bubble wrap at $51,000).

The thing is, I don't want people to think that I'm antisocial. What I want people to think is that I'm introverted. It's not that I don't like people, it's that when I do spend time with people, it's exhausting.

In the month of November, I attended a kickoff, 8 write-ins, a midway party (okay, that was tiny, but still) and not one, but TWO TGIO parties. This four or five times more socializing than I do in the normal course of things, when I attend a couple of writers' groups a month and might, in a good month, go out with friends perhaps once.

During my regularly-scheduled writers' groups, I normally see the same people over and over. I know them, and my writers' nights generally end by 9:30 with me in bed one time. Even so, every time, I feel like I need to sleep in the next day. That's a common feeling for introverts - spend time in company and need time to recover your energy and equilibrium.

So, what happens when I spend the entire month with folks that I don't see all the time? While I genuinely like people and don't mind spending time with them, what happened to me after the whole Nanowrimo thing was that for the first two full weeks of December, I exhibited symptoms one normally associates with depression - feeling exhausted all the time, being short-tempered, constantly feeling that I was behind on things (even though I wasn't), feeling listless and completely overwhelmed. It's only been in the past week that I've felt like my old energetic self again.

This is my second year as a Municipal Liaison for Nanowrimo, and I'm still working it out. Next year, perhaps a little more planning for the aftermath. Perhaps a moratorium on social events in the two weeks right after. I don't know.