Ultra-introverts who live nocturnally
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Vampirism?
I have a job where I often need to be at work before dawn. During the winter months I also leave work long after sunset. And, for security reasons, my office doesn't have windows. Mid-December I had to walk between buildings. I hadn't thought much about it but as soon as I stepped outside the sunlight was very powerful. The reflection off the snow made it doubly so. I then realized I hadn't seen sunlight in weeks. I half expected to catch fire like a Hollywood vampire.
This one time, for some months, I had these really terrible things called corneal erosions. I'd wake up, open my eyes, and in doing so my eyelids would pull off bits of eye tissue. No warning. Absolute literal screaming pain.
Darkness was really needed for a while, for recuperation. Among other things, I learned that the difference between indoor and outdoor light levels is really quite something. I had previously underestimated the difference.
Like, I thought that sitting in a vehicle with tinted windows in the daytime might be similar, in terms of light levels, to being in a room inside a house during the daytime. So I'd sit in the back of the family van for a while, during a vacation trip for example. But it was not even close, for practical purposes.
I do have to wonder if some people are more naturally aware, at some level, of the difference, and they calibrate to it, either consciously or unconsciously. Others may think the result unhealthy. But that may also be a subjective perception worth questioning in order to get at important details...
My waking hours are typically 12pm-3am. Can confirm that eating during the early morning (i.e. when normally asleep) puts a noticeable strain on the system. Which must be connected to the scientific fact that night shifts are bad for health. I presume partly because night shift people don't do night shifts all the time and thus have to continually reset their circadian clocks, which will include eating at the 'wrong' times.
Me too, when I was carb loading for breakfast. That stopped when I got into the habit of eating (only) beef for breakfast. For me it's just less work to digest, and keeps the hunger away for much longer.
This was a quiet time and there was nobody but it had is downsides: the team meetings were in the morning so they never saw me there, my breakfast was lunch and obviously I had no social life (I was there alone so that was the last of my worries. Science FTW!)
Anyway, my own experience with this kind of schedule is that minor social encounters can mean a bit more. If you go to the shop at 5:30pm after work, you may be in a lineup with 10 other people and feel completely ignored. At 3am, things move at a more leisurely pace. People might actually notice that you exist.
Then there's online life, which can fill in a lot. But again, the author just... skipped over it, along with anything substantive about other cultures. I'd love to see a real dive into what the lifestyle is like for other people (although I'm currently a morning person and feeling significantly healthier this way!).
Who cares about the "full spectrum of pleasure"? Should we judge people who have never had sex? Should we judge people who have never used heroin? Life isn't all about pleasure. As long as they're happy and not hurting anyone, just let them live.
Some people who have gone through clinical death describe the experience as intensively joyous. Again, I am not doing that deliberately.
So what? Live and let live.
Yes, I feel normal when I'm the only human awake for miles around. I also like when my friends stay up to join me! I also like pretending like I'm that one caveman who stays up at night at the opening of the communal gorge. I say that half-jokingly but I really have no idea why humans would be awake at night otherwise.
Anyways, I'll keep a look out, gang. Sleep tight.
"Sure I can paint a horse, I've heard them described many times" http://cdn.cavemancircus.com//wp-content/uploads/images/2019...
The fact someone can write so many words about introversion and never actually explain what it is just helps perpetuate misunderstandings. It takes energy for an introvert to be around other people, extroverts gain energy around others. There are omniverts as well of course. All behaviors are derived from there. See how hard that was to write?
It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether someone "has a need for human connection", that is completely unrelated to introversion. But now we have pieces like this try to make the case that introverts have no need for human connection, and then helpfully investigates if this is a condition that needs treatment. Totally harmless.
The article makes no mention of autism or ADHD, which probably are partially responsible for a sizable chunk of "ultra-introverts".
It’s just very difficult to make progress on other goals when everything is closed, and nobody responds to emails outside of normal working hours. I’m talking about people who you want to do work for you (doctors, home maintenance, financial-related services, and so on, which are numerous).
I’ve also become much more easily irritated when interrupted, and have more difficulty multitasking. As I type, I’m trying to flip back to normal people hours, but that’s harder as I age, so far I’m waking up earlier but practically not sleeping.
Perhaps unrelated and anecdoctal, but it seems post-covid, nobody gets anything done. It requires endless harassment to move things along, people don’t respond, or just don’t show up. You have to call at the precise right time.
Hire a day-secretary, or start a business model renting a per-task personal assistant where you can delegate the phone-tag.
My sleeping schedule is fluid. I keep my own cycle regardless of visibility of closes star. I can extend my day and thus move the cycle forward. However I pretty much can't shorten the day, or the night. If I don't sleep enough, I just doze off during the day. For some time (few weeks maybe?) I was even fitting two sleep/awake cycles in each 24h.
I lived in a small-ish suburb at the time, and it was surreally peaceful. I went months where the only person I ran into was the cashier at the grocery checkout an occasional other person in the aisles of the store, I could exercise in peace, there were almost no cars on the road.
It was very nice.
I was a lowly assistant, but I really enjoyed the work. There was something very serene and calming about it all, the crew being mostly alone in this huge building, the nighttime city lights visible out the windows.
To this day it remains one of my favorite jobs I ever had, despite the fact that I now have a desk job career and make much better money.
This basic problem, assuming some base commonality that turns out to have a much larger variability within a "normal" population, seems to plague a lot of the results coming out of the social sciences. It's one of the primary reasons I don't put a lot of weight into the research in these fields. I often find my lived experience very different to what they find. Maybe it is a necessary step on the road to a fuller understanding (we've got to start somewhere), but I think we end up over-simplifying the complexities of what it can mean to be human.
Difficult to see this changing, as happy, healthy people aren't going to pay for therapy, institutionalization or medication... well, unless you convince them that they're actually unhealthy.
The study of "positive psychology" was conceived to address this shortcoming. However, I'm not sure how much it has influenced/improved the field of psychology as a whole.
> Positive psychology began as a new domain of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association.
> It is a reaction against past practices, which have tended to focus on mental illness and emphasized maladaptive behavior and negative thinking.
all of "those people" are identical enough to be called "those people" and [hated | revered] because of it. some people were helped by $X treatment, therefore all people should receive it, and they must be lying if they claim it didn't work. ... and so on.
Very relatable. Seems like a common theme in these "ultra-introverts" is the desire to escape in some way. From that perspective, I can see where the concerns of it being an "unhealthy" behavior stem from.
I'm kind of curious why the behavior is skewed more towards night than early morning as I've had similar, peaceful, calm-before-the-storm, experiences from waking up very early (3am-6am).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder
Comorbidities include ADHD, depression and OCD.
People infer "social" to meaning talking, making friends, going to parties, etc, but there are more useful definitions here. The greater social need we have is to be judged and make judgements of others. This behavior evolved into us long before language did.
The modern hermit need not talk to anyone. They simple need to have a presence in some internet community to fill their social cup.
Yeah pretty much. This is also my schedule, I've always preferred to be alone 99% of the time, and for the past 20 years I've had a romantic partner and zero interest in developing any other strong social relationships.
The real downside is that you have very limited sunlight hours, so I have to be sure to take a nice long walk outside while the sun is still up to keep my brain happy.
I would take my hour lunch break and wander around Tokyo at 2 am.
It was fun for a while but it started to really get to me after a while.
you will also get to know your local law enforcement because keeping odd hours means you are assumed to be inherently criminal.