Ways To Preserve Your Energy Throughout the Day

 As an introvert, it can be quite difficult to maintain your energy throughout the day. If you have a family, you have their demands to take care of. If you are working full time and have to be in an office all day, you have your colleague's requests to take care of and to do all of that small talk which as we all know can be very tiring for us introverts.

What can you do during the day to preserve your energy?

This is a an excellent question and it is something that is crucial for introverts to maintain their energy and their sanity. 

1. Carve out times throughout the day in which your door is closed and that people know that when that door is closed, they have to wait until you have finished reenergising. 

2. Go out and get some (as a lot of women say) "me time." This could mean going for a walk. This could mean going to the gym for a quick workout or it could mean, going shopping by yourself or maybe leaving work early and going to see a movie.

3. A nap. During the pandemic and the lockdowns, my friend told me that I should be taking naps. I did and I felt really good after them. Sometimes I would only nap for 9 minutes or 13 minutes and each time it felt like I had slept all day. I felt good.

Those are just some ideas on how to preserve your energy. I'm sure that we all have our different ways.

 We must remember that energy preservation is crucial in the life of an introvert.

How to respond to the "past invitation."

One of those things that I find absolutely frustrating is when you are invited to something after the face.

I'll give you an example:

"Hi Blair. How are you? Did you have a good New Year's vacation? How did you spend New Year's Eve?

"Good thanks. Happy New Year to you. I spent New Year's Eve by myself at home relaxing."

"Really? You should have called us. We could have gone out together. We had a great time with 300 of my closest friends."

"Thank you. I'll remember that for next year."

How many of you have had this conversation on January the 5th? 

If you are anything like me, it annoys the hell out of me. It is such an easy thing to say and there is no responsibility to the words at all. It is just an empty invitation. 

This got me thinking, what are the appropriate responses to this? Here is a list of my ideas for that scenario.

1. "Thank you." (and walk away.)

2. "How was it? What did you do?" (I suppose this is the most "normal" way of answering it and something that can create a conversation and that it doesn't make you look too weird at all.

3. Change the subject.

4. "Let's go out to celebrate the new year anyway." When are you free? How about next Thursday?" (If the person actually meant it, then they will accept next Thursday or suggest another day. If it was just an empty platitude then you will see them squirm and make some kind of excuse and that they will call you "later." Another thing that will happen and this has happened to me is, they will accept your invite and then the day of they will come up with some kind of excuse why they can't go, sickness usually, and they will cancel on you. (This happened to me and I never went out with the person again. That person had their chance and didn't follow through on it.)

At the end of the day, your response is up to you and you have to decide to be "normal" or use some kind of passive aggressive thing that might give you a moment of amusement and be left off invitation lists for years to come.

Group Interviews and why you should avoid them if possible

 Recently, I was involved in a group interview. It was for a job that I would have worked for a tour company in that I would show groups of tourists around New Zealand.

Why did this appeal to me?

1. I like the idea of the tourism industry and in my experience it is such a broad industry and there are lots of opportunities.

2. I like that I would have been gone for a large proportion of the month. In a previous post I talked about the George Clooney movie, Up in the Air. In this movie, Clooney's character spends more than 300 days a year away from home and he loves it. I wanted to find out what this lifestyle would be like so I applied for it.

3. I liked the idea that this company is an international company and the possibility I could tell was that I might be able to work in Japan. Summer in New Zealand and then summer in Japan. Sounds like the dream to me. The other day I read the following article about a woman from New Zealand who wanted to do that and is well on the way to making that dream a reality.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/home-property/350321923/kiwi-buys-stunning-holiday-home-japan-123000

I applied for this job in the traditional way and was surprised to receive a phone call a few short days later. The guy was calling from Melbourne (I think) and he and I spoke for 15 minutes or so. So far, so good.

A couple of weeks later, I received an invitation to another interview, on Zoom online. Great I thought. That's progress. I had to prepare a couple of things which weren't arduous and I thought that I was quite well prepared.

What I didn't think about however, was the fact that it was a group interview. 

What is it that people say? 55% of communication is non-verbal? How the hell can you get that across on a Zoom call? Seriously!

I knew after about 5 minutes that I was fucked, especially when they asked questions not specifying the particular person. People were jumping in here and there and I had to wait until right at the end and basically regurgitate what the other people had said.

The people I talked to about this afterwards said that I probably wouldn't have been suited to this particular job. You are basically on call 24/7 and you would probably be expected to socialize to all hours and get up at 6am the next day. For some of you, that sounds like fun and for others it sounds like hell. Maybe it might have been hell for me but I would have like to have had the opportunity.

My advice here is to try and avoid these group interviews if possible and try to get a face-to-face meeting if possible. I know in 2024 that kind of thing is getting more and more difficult as companies are doing more and more things online as a more convenient and a more efficient way of doing things.

When I think of that interview, I think of the number of people who have been passed over because they don't come across very well online or they are not as pushy or as aggressive as they should be when answering questions for the group.

Don't give up on this dream if you come across obstacles like this. There are always ways around it. You just have to be smart about it. 

Introversion 101 sure, but you have to get out of it from time to time

 I should really have restarted this blog during the Covid period. The covid period, or as I like to call it, the mask years, seemed to go on forever in Japan while other countries were back to normal relatively quickly. I don't why that was. Maybe the risk averse nature of the people in that country and the fear of the outside world. (I'm sorry if you are reading this in Japan but it is true. You wanted tourists to come but when they do, you don't want them there anymore. Which is it? Oh, I see, they don't follow the rules. Well, when you have a plethora of rules that don't make sense half the time and a population that subserviently follows them and has a touch of xenophobia, what do you expect?)

I'm glad I got that rant out of the way. I wonder if I will be allowed back into the country. 

Anyway, what was I talking about? The covid period, that's right.

During this time, I went periods, more than once in which I didn't leave the house. I didn't go out the front door. The only time I went outside was when I would open the sliding door and hang out my washing. I didn't even put more foot outside. I think the longest period was 6 days. About 144 hours of staying at home and not even looking outside. 

I lived on the ground floor of the apartment complex but it was designed in such a way that and with the slope of the road that my room was below the road surface and that I looked out to a concrete wall. Because of this, I can only remember me opening my curtains a handful of times. 

Over time, from the beginning of January 2020 to about the middle of 2023, I was basically holed up in my room (apartment). Of course, I went out and did things but not as much as I should have. This brought with it loneliness. I'm actually holding back the tears as I write this. The room was comfortable, it was warm enough. I had an excellent bed with nice pillows etc. but at some stages I wished that I could have shared it with someone too.

Of course, I did try online dating but that stopped in about September 2022 when I catfished someone. It wasn't the greatest thing that I have ever done and even now I can still see vividly in my mind the look on her face when she saw me. Not my finest moment. I must admit that I just was happy to get out of my apartment and to share it with someone. It was a beautiful day and the Tokyo hotties were out and about especially in the area that I was in. 

I think what I am trying to say in this autobiographical post is that for an introvert, it is ok to want to spend some time alone to recharge. That is introversion 101. However, we must remember that we all need to socialize. We all need to get out there from time to time. Even I forget this from time to time. We all need to meet new people and to engage with them and hey, you don't know what it going to come of it.

Make it your goal this week to find an event or something similar in which you will be engaging with other people, strangers if you will. 

I will do the same. Good luck. 

ALONE TIME IS GOOD... FOR EVERYONE

That was a false start. Not good. I am very good at starting something and then not following through. Let's start again.

I saw the quote below, the other day. I don't know who John Graves is but it makes a lot of sense.

John Graves  "A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness and that to seek it is perversion."

Occasionally, the introvert needs some alone time. 

WHY?

Because that is how he or she recharges. That is how the introvert gets the energy to go again and then have a lot more to say and be very talkative. If you don't let he or she have that, you are going to get nothing out of them and then you will have more complaints.

Let the introvert have that alone time. They will feel better and you will have a better experience with them.

Does that sound like a deal?

Apologies!

 Oops! Well that was a false alarm. After saying that I was back for my daily blog posts, I completely forgot to do anything yesterday. Oh well. The good thing about the next day is that you can start again and promise yourself that you won't forget tomorrow. 

I'll do my best.

 Is Sir Sean right? Do losers always talk about their best?

Well, in this case. I will do my "behst."

See you tomorrow.

WELCOME BACK

 Hello and welcome back to the new and improved Daily RBL.

This is going to sound quite dramatic but this is the first day of the rest of my life.

I'm not going to tell you what has happened in the last few years since I stopped posting regularly but I am sure that will come out in the coming days and months. 

I'm told that blogging is dead but that is all very well but I am doing this for myself. I'm doing it because I enjoy coming up with new ideas and it is a challenge to come up with something everyday and in other days it is a pleasure. 

This is an example of something that was a pleasure to write:

https://dailyrbl.blogspot.com/2016/10/what-do-brendon-mccullum-ross-taylor.html

Admittedly I wrote it on a Sunday so I had time to think about it but it was still a pleasure.

Thank you for your continued support, I look forward to entertaining you and hopefully myself over the coming months.

Thank you.