How to keep an introvert awake at night.

First, a thing you should know about introverts: We are sucked dry by crowds and interaction. For me, an hour in a crowd requires several hours of quite time, alone, to re-charge.

Next, what you should know about my day yesterday: It was the day of moving, storing, donating, and trashing stuff from one half of our building to prepare for a major renovation project. Fifty very kind and engaged members of the congregation came to help. As a staff person, I needed to direct a lot of the work, in order to make sure that many vital tasks got done. Then I had to go straight to my second choir rehearsal – which meant sitting in a room and working together with 60 other people UNTIL 9:00 PM!!!

Everything about the day was positive. Good people, tons of work done, the joy of making music (though picking up sight reading after 25 years out of choir is just about as exhausting as directing a moving day).

As I crawled into bed, barely managing to drag my limbs under the sheets, reality hit. Though I was totally drained, it was going to be a sleepless night. Sure enough, I was awake so much through out the night, it was as if I’d had a pot of coffee before bed. Overstimulation = no rest for the weary.

But there was a bright side, in something I’d witnessed during the hours of the big move.

A young man, a sophomore in high school who I’ve known since he was quite young, came to me for directions. I asked him to get a small-ish pile of junk out to the dumpster. He was agreeable, and I moved on to other tasks. Half an hour later I looked across the room and witnessed this kid carrying one small, tattered basket and moving at a snail’s pace across the room. He’d been taking one tiny item out at a time. Oh, well. At least he was gainfully employed. But then…I took a look at his hair, his clothes, his gait. And it hit me.

He looked exactly like Butthead. And he was about as motivated as my old MTV pal, too.