Introversion reversion

I've been having a tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle lately. While my kind of planet isn't quite getting blown up, it is definitely going through some changes. I daresay I'm living through the weirdest experience of my 36 years of existence. I speak of none but the coronavirus.

But we'll come back to that (and dispense with the gratuitous use of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy references). Surprisingly, the actual difficulty I've been having with my lifestyle is not the global disaster unfolding around me, but rather something much more mundane. It's that I've been having an identity crisis, about one very specific personality trait of mine: Am I really an introvert after all?

For most of my adult life, I was fairly confident in my extreme introversion. From the Myers-Briggs test I took in 10th grade, on which I scored 99% introverted; to the "Party Like an Introvert" kit I designed in grad school; to the book (The Introvert Advantage) I purchased in 2012—you don't know what a statement that is, from a person who never ever pays for reading material!—I solidly identified as an introvert.

But around the same time I purchased that book, something happened. I started drinking alcohol. What a miracle drug that substance is! All of a sudden, parties went from anxiety-inducing horror shows to something I could actually describe as fun! I was fortunate enough to start dating a certified extrovert shortly thereafter, which made meeting new people a regular, and totally tolerable, occurrence in my life.

After a few years of nonstop fun, my boyfriend lost interest in the social circuit, and the friends that I'd developed in that time started to disappear into their own private lives. Everyone I knew was getting tired out and ready to quit, while I felt like I was just getting warmed up! When my relationship ended last March, I threw myself wholeheartedly into building a new social network, seeking out activities and gatherings with abandon and partying like it was my job.

It was around this time that I began to question whether I really qualified as an introvert any more. While being extroverted seems like it would be an asset, the thought of it actually made me very uncomfortable. My whole identity was built on being introverted. If I was acting more like an extrovert than everyone I knew who actually claimed to be an extrovert, what did that make me? Well, I can now say with the wisdom that comes from a year of ruminating, it was "desperate."

After an early adulthood living like a shut-in old woman, I had finally discovered the joys of being young. After a lifetime of being mostly isolated, I had found a sense of belonging. All humans want to belong—even introverts—and so, I embraced every opportunity to have a social life, and when my tenuous connections began to unravel, I doubled down! On the surface, my actions seemed to be textbook extroversion (even to myself!), but I now believe it was actually me compensating for the handicaps of being a true introvert – and, oddly enough, the thing that made me realize it was the coronavirus.

I hesitate to make light of such a serious situation, but apparently every pandemic has a silver lining...and for me, it was once again feeling secure about my antisocial side. I spent much of the last year desperately seeking human contact. I started trying to organize get-togethers among my friends; I joined Bumble BFF; I considered each person I met a potential pal; I said yes to every invitation. To be honest, though, it was all getting exhausting.

All the anxiety about reaching out, the inevitable rejections, the struggle to keep connections current, the frequent hangovers (yes, what a miracle drug and a mistake that alcohol is!)—my efforts to maintain a social life were more cost than benefit. But I had to keep doing it—I had to! Or else I'd find myself depressed and lonely, just like I was all those years ago.

Then COVID-19 arrived. When I started reading about how our best bet to keep the spread of the virus under control was to practice "extreme social distancing," I was all in. If I could finally give up the frantic cultivation of a network and just coast along for a while, how wonderful would that be? If my being alone could be, not something forced upon me by my failure to form connections, but a personal choice that actually serves a public good, why should I not embrace solitude? On Wednesday, I vowed to do my part and cut all my in-person interactions to a bare minimum, until such a time as I feel the crisis is over. And I felt relieved by my decision.

That was when I knew I was still a member of the introvert club. While I wasn't exactly looking forward to weeks of self-imposed isolation, neither did I feel particularly bad about all the activities I knew I was about to miss. I have lots of things to keep me busy alone, and I knew I could handle it. For some reason, being alone by choice is not nearly as depressing as being alone by accident of fate.

Ironically, no sooner had I made that decision, than I was contacted out of the blue by 2 separate friends I hadn't heard from in an age, wanting to know if we could meet up sometime. What is it about a virulent illness that makes people want to come together? I don't know, but I declined one invitation and had the other one conveniently negated by the cancellation of all public gatherings. I got into a somewhat contentious exchange with the organizer of one of the Meetup groups I belong to, who insisted that I should come out to small group Meetups because they were not gatherings of 500 or more people, but I held my ground (or rather, I just stopped responding to her texts, as any true blue recluse would!).

I'm so glad I got back in touch with my introverted side, because it's not only making me feel like I have a better handle on my identity, but it's also making me feel like I have some control in a scary world that's getting crazier by the minute.

We, the citizens of the earth, are in an unprecedented situation right now, yet we have the power to do something about it. Introverts, unite! (Or rather, disband immediately!) Solitude will make us stronger.

Adventures in Cooking: Chocolate Covered Ginger

Most of my Adventures in Cooking! are born out of necessity—the necessity to get rid of a specific pesky ingredient in my possession. But more often lately, I've been experiencing necessity of a different sort—the necessity of having a food I can't buy ready-made.

While I can supply most of my basic needs at the local supermarkets, it recently came to my attention that certain dietary staple had become scarce everywhere: chocolate-covered ginger.

Now you might be thinking, "I never knew chocolate-covered ginger was a basic need," and you'd be mostly right. But when your will to live is contingent on satisfying your very selective sweet tooth, then chocolate-covered ginger becomes a bona fide requirement. And when my supply of it ran out this summer, I found myself in the throes of a chocolate-covered-ginger emergency!

Chocolate-covered-ginger – we'll call it CCG for short because that makes it sound like a drug, and this the story of my addiction – was the food I never knew I needed until I ran out of it. I discovered its existence when I first started working at the organic market 15 years ago, and I was surprised to discover I enjoyed the tingly feeling of ginger and the crunchy feeling of sugar granules and the euphoric snap of dark chocolate all combined in one. But I didn't eat it that often, so it took me probably two years to consume my last quarter-pound tub of the stuff.

Once it was gone, I kinda-sorta started missing it, so I put it on my grocery list to buy again when I had the chance. For months, I never had the chance. At Mom's Organic Market, my former source of it, the CCG shelf remained puzzlingly empty for weeks on end. I took a trip to the Amish market, where bulk snacks and candies of all sorts can be found, and eventually discovered a shelf labeled "chocolate covered ginger," but what was on that shelf were some mysterious chocolate spheres the size of marbles—not the oversized sheets of ginger and chocolate that I knew and loved. Surely those balls were something else, taking up the place of a product that was temporarily out of stock, just as the CCG had been at MOM's.

But then, weeks later, I noticed the CCG shelf at MOM's had been refilled...with the same tiny chocolate spheres I'd seen at the Amish market. This was not a good sign. It meant that chocolate-covered ginger slices had been discontinued and replaced with balls...and chocolate-covered ginger balls were not at all what I wanted!

Now you might be thinking, "So what? Your ginger comes in ball form instead of sheet form. I think you'll survive," and you'd be right. But my very selective sweet tooth only enjoys foods that it can nibble on, and tiny candies that must be eaten whole do not meet that qualification. I don't waste my time (or my limited carbs-quota) on sweets that aren't truly a treat in every way, so (as soon as I had confirmed that the sliced variety was not available online either), CCG was effectively off the table.

You might be thinking that would be good for my aforementioned carbs-quota, since I wouldn't be squandering any of it on chocolate-covered ginger, but alas, that was not the case. Scarcity drives demand, and I could not get the visions of CCG to stop dancing in my head.

However, it's not actually that hard to cover anything in chocolate, I reasoned. So I decided to make my own! The results of this Adventure in Craving Cooking are this very simple recipe:

Chocolate Covered Something-or-other

Ingredients:

• Candied/crystallized ginger slices (or whatever else you feel like coating with chocolate)
• Chocolate chips (however much you estimate will cover the amount of something-or-other you're using)

Steps:

1. Prepare a surface where the chocolate-covered something can cool and harden. I used a very shabby old silicone baking mat.
2. Melt chocolate chips. I hope I don't have to explain how to melt chocolate? There are tons of tutorials out there.
3. Using a spoon, spread melted chocolate over the entirety of each something-or-other (except the part where you're holding it between your fingers—it's fine to just leave that uncovered)
4. Place chocolate-covered somethings on your work surface, making sure not to let them touch.
5. Allow to harden in the refrigerator.
6. When they are fully cooled, peel them away from the surface and enjoy!

Chef's tip: If you end up with leftover chocolate, you can spread it onto a flexible object such as a plastic lid or the same silicone baking sheet. Then when it's hard, you can break it into chunks and use it in brownies, or just save it for the next time you're jonesing for chocolate-covered anything, cause now you have a foolproof recipe for making it!