Introverts and N's

We're on our way home for Christmas.  We have an overnight stopover in this terrific city, but my spouse is sick and needs to rest, so I'm catching up on blogging.  Read a great article today on being an introvert:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-dembling/nine-signs-that-you-might_b_2251932.html#slide=1849756.  Now, I'm a LOUD introvert - I do like to throw parties, I LOVE having people in for dinner, I enjoy long cups of coffee with close friends, and I'm able to get up and speak in public with fear but without terror.   That said, I also need a lot of quiet time - and I think the author got it right when she said that an introvert's brain is always occupied - not always well occupied, perhaps, but occupied.  I've been known to jump high when someone walks into a room when I'm thinking - I get lost in my head pretty quickly.  For most of my life, I thought I was an extrovert - I wasn't shy, which I confused with introversion.  I think that being an extrovert was expected in my NFOO - we were a crowd unto ourselves and there were no boundaries, so therefore no privacy- tough on an introvert.  So I functioned like an extrovert, but with a LOT of anxiety - I think that may be one of the reasons that my anxiety has abated - now I take time for me, I weave and think without talking to anyone, I make quiet spaces in my life for me.  When the kids were little, I'd get up really early so that I'd have some alone time before the day began.  Now I have all the time I need to be alone, to think.  This, of course, was frowned on in NFOO - my grandmother used to say that I was "book smart" but didn't have common sense - this isn't true at all, but I think she didn't like that I went away into my head a lot.  Trying to escape to a quiet place was really frowned on in my NFOO - it seemed that noise and chaos were the order of the day,probably to keep other things at bay...  Even now, when everyone gets together, it's about laughing hysterically and "having fun" - lots of noise and chaos still.  I don't really know how many of my sibs are introverts - I suspect that most of us who've been ousted are - but I suspect that  at least one of the Flying Monkeys is, too.  But I think it's difficult to be constantly available for supply when you're an introvert - , probably another source of the anxiety that plagues this group.