It's been a while since I last wrote a post here.
I've been busy.
Still trying to get a Martello Tower in Eastbourne open to the public, doing some house-hunting and working on a project to see how the historical landscape of a fine house in Bristol is reflected in the current ecology of the land now.
This latter came to a head this weekend when we put on an event called a BioBlitz. Find out more about that here: www.kwag.org.uk.
For me it was a project/event management job and though they're all unique, it involved applying tried and tested techniques I've learned over many, many years.
However, projects and events are still learning opportunities and we should make the most of them with a bit of quiet reflection.
I learned that male spiders have club-shaped palps, whilst females have smooth ones.
I learned that the fly in the picture above is a scorpion fly and that there are only two species of them so they are fairly easy to fully identify (unlike many other types of flora and fauna).
I learned that goldfinches usually travel in big flocks and when you only see a pair in your garden, like as not, there will be other pairs nearby in your neighbours' gardens since they'll have all travelled to your neighbourhood in one of those large flocks.
And I finally understood the difference between shyness and introversion.
In a number of psychometric assessments and personality typing exercises in my old job extroversion/introversion were explained to me but I still had in mind that introversion=shyness.
Apparently this is not an uncommon mistake.
I've always said I was shy/introverted...but was aware that the manifestation of this trait had become less obvious and less inhibiting over the last couple of years.
This latest project has required me to work with quite a large number of people who haven't known me for many years (which was always an advantage in my old job). It's meant that I've had to go and meet strangers, work through the project tasks with them and, ultimately, meet and greet members of the public as part of the event itself.
Once upon a time, any one of these tasks could strike terror in my heart - giving me feelings of anxiety for hours or days beforehand. But not this time.
I've been perfectly happy to chat with the other people on the project team, with the naturalists and volunteers on the BioBlitz itself, with school children and other people attending the event.
And yet on Friday, after a full day of being surrounded by people I went home feeling totally overwhelmed.
Suddenly it hit me. It wasn't the shyness thing...it was the introvert in me who was over-stimulated by such an "peopled" environment.
Today (the second day of the event) I made a special effort to take myself off to a quiet corner from time to time - just for 10 minutes or so (little jobs like checking the loos for toilet roll, or taking out the rubbish), and then accompanying a very small group of people hunting for spiders.
And it worked.
I was still really tired by the event - and definitely needed a bit of space afterwards - but I didn't feel stressed at the end like I had on Friday.
And that's when I finally got the difference between introversion and shyness. I've got past my shyness: new people, new situations no longer scare me but the introversion will probably always mean that big groups of people overwhelm me if I'm around them too long. And that's fine. I just need to remember to absent myself from time to time to chill out.
That's the most useful lesson I've learned in a while.
