Five Minute Friday: Crowd

With some prompting from my friend Katie, I'm joining Lisa Jo Baker  for Five Minute Friday, my first ever. Basically you write unedited for 5 minutes on the prompt which this week is CROWD. Here we go!

Crowds. Love 'em!

As an oldest child in a family of 4 and growing up on a camp I've been surrounded with crowds my whole life. I'm an extrovert in that I get my energy from being around lots of people. I suffered from "FOMO" before I knew it was a thing. In college if I found myself sitting alone for longer than half an hour I immediately started looking for a group of people to join in with.

And then I moved to Northern Minnesota for a year. Nothing in Northern Minnesota is crowded unless it's the frozen lake on an ice fishing Saturday. It's beautiful and serene but when you can drive for 20 minutes without passing a single car, you're out there.

At first it was hard. Where were the people? How would I survive? How would I ever find energy if I couldn't draw from a group? I was so far out there I didn't even have a library to get new books from. So I started spending more and more time alone. Well, alone with my laptop and seasons of Friends.

I didn't love that "uncrowded" season of my life, but I got through it.

When I found myself living back in a place where I had neighbors, plans and crowds around me again I realized I'd changed.

This extrovert had discovered an introverted side that I never would've guessed existed.

Nowadays I need that balance and I think that's come from my season of quietness but also from maturing and growing up a little. Rather than run to a crowd to fill my time I need to reconnect with myself (and still sometimes with that laptop and seasons of Once Upon A Time). My soul starts to feel crowded if I don't give myself that breathing space and I think that's a good place for me to be in.