I too am highly introverted and find Laura’s weekends really scary. They are way too full for me. However, although I avoid parties like the plague, I still end up going to lots of lunches, teas and dinners with close friends. Make one or two close friends at primary school, high school, university, the first job, the second, the third job, and they all add up. At one time in my life, I would say yes to every invitation to meet up and end up with crazy, full weekends. How I apply Laura’s advice to planning the weekends is to ensure that I plan for restorative activities and alone time, so that I don’t feel totally drained by all my weekend activities on Monday.

I love this comment! ” A competitive race for emptiness” Ha!

@xykademiqz – thanks for the comment, it’s always fascinating to hear how other people approach time, and I know you think about it a lot. Curiously enough, I always rate as an introvert on the personality quizzes. From my understanding, introverts don’t mind interacting with people we know well, and that’s who I spent most of the weekend with: family, my husband’s close colleagues, other parents we’ve known for 8 years at the preschool, my fellow choir members that I sing with every week. There was also not-talking-to-anyone time both days: running long on Saturday; a lot of time in the car to/from the Eagles game on Sunday (my son had his decompression time playing his Nintendo Switch once it looked like we’d be in traffic for a while). And both nights reading in bed for a bit.

First, most people don’t rely on outside help so much that booking them or not would make or break an engagement. I have never in my life hired a babysitter in order to go to a party. Most people don’t make enough money for all the outside help. But Laura’s family does, so kudos to them.

Second, I am quite introverted and my hobbies are solitary (writing fiction). But I do enjoy kids’ sports and music and am always the one taking the kids to those events. However, I do greatly prefer if I don’t have to socialize with anyone during these events, or if it’s with people I know very well. I get alone time over the week in my office at work, but if I don’t, like over summer break, I become really unpleasant. As much as I love my kids, extended vacations are torture because I am always on. My husband is *extremely* introverted. He’s much worse than me and really doesn’t tolerate people very well. He absolutely abhors small talk.

We don’t go to many parties (often I will go but he won’t) because parties are overwhelmingly an unpleasant and shallow waste of time for us (yes, just like you say “Such time is effortlessly fun, but it’s also completely forgettable. It disappears as if it never existed” — I say that for a vast majority of IRL social interactions, including parties). I think extroverted people just reject this notion that time IRL with people is not inherently magical and meaningful to everyone. Parties suck; mingling with people sucks. I can do it as well as anyone when I need to (e.g., at work) but it’s not my idea of fun to spend free time on the small-talk inanity. Many experiences (amusement parks, stadiums, etc.) also suck because of crowds. I hate crowds. I even go shopping at the most unusual time in order to avoid crowds and to avoid extremely chatty salespeople.

Time on the computer isn’t always mindless. I have no Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat , only my blog and literary Twitter. Some of my most meaningful personal connections are with the people whom I found online, and these connections arose from common interests and hobbies, rather than from physical proximity.

Extroverts, by all means continue to extrovert and more power to you, but please leave us introverts alone. We really wish you would.

Yes, individual tolerance levels for activity may vary, but with the minimalism crowd it feels like there’s a competitive race for emptiness. And that’s kinda, well, boring.

@Marci – that’s good that you plan outings for you and friends or the kids. That way you still get to do them! The issues more arise when one party’s desire to stay home winds up holding everyone else there, whether they want to be or not.

@Gillian – no brilliant thoughts. I would think you could actually stick with the schedule and leave the 2.5 year old to have special daddy time in the afternoons while you do stuff with the big kids. It’s not perfect downtime if they’re watching cartoons together but in a 2-parent, 4-kid family, I think you have to negotiate and agree to trade off to get solo downtime on the weekend. So sure, you take all 4 at one point if he then agrees to take all 4 at some other point (which you then use to go out and do stuff with friends, since you like to do more of that).

It is hard to satisfy all four! We do all like swimming at the indoor pool at the YMCA on winter weekends. Some science museums have stuff that 11-year-olds and 3-year-olds like. We did a reasonable number of county fairs this summer because the big kids liked the rides and games and the little kids liked the animals.