What do you like about yourself that you never did when young

That is an insanely long title. But I had to get it all in there. Not what you like about yourself. But what you like about yourself Now that you never did when you were younger.

And the answer is *Drum roll* I didn’t like being an introvert

I thought it was like a malformed extrovert.

I was terrified of presentations while extroverts excelled

They made friends easier

Extroverts just seemed to be more socially acceptable and had things easier.

But you know as I got older I truly valued my introverted self. That introspective person who thinks before she speaks. And is better at writing than talking. Works very well alone. And I love alone time.

I actually wrote a post called ‘Rock your introverted self‘

I love alone time. I don’t mind socially with a few close friends. I do not like crowds and a bunch of people I do not know or even care about. And I love when I get home and have my alone time to recharge and do the things I enjoy. I do not think I am a broken extrovert. I have no desire to be an extrovert.

On the other hand, I rather envy the ambivert. Best of both world there. But I am quite content to be my introverted self now.

I hated being nerdy but most people saw me as anti-social, which I was

I didn’t look nerdy. I wore black all the time. I listened to heavy metal music and later alternative. And I was very anti-social.

I hated group work because it always made my grades go down. I wanted to always work alone. It was frustrating that people never take the opinion of the shy one when she excelled at that course. I had no problem with any subject really but I did loathe math (Irony since I had to prove my thesis with transfinite mathematics that I had to teach myself). Loved English, which is of no surprise at all. But I didn’t love it in university. Too much picking apart a work that I knew wasn’t the author’s intent. I excelled at it but that I because I knew what the prof wanted. But you know I excelled at university but because of my insane Imposter syndrome, I didn’t see it that way At All. In hindsight, yeah, I rocked it. At the time? Felt like no accomplishment was mine to own.

While I was socially awkward, shy and never seemed to relate to others because what I wanted to talk about and thought was interested… they never did. I always saw that blank-eyed zoning out. I had to literally learn idle chitchat which to this say I despise with the fire of a billion suns. I just wanted to talk about fascinating things I had read or learned.

And they always made me feel bad when I used words they didn’t understand. I read avidly. I picked up a lot of vocabulary simply from that. But not everyone did. And so it would just come naturally to use these words I knew and it made people uncomfortable. Like I was being arrogant or patronizing. I learned to dumb myself down in order to make other people more comfortable.

I hated that feeling of never belonging. I was into a lot of things but none of them were cool things. Aside from when I got really into alternative music and people also shortly after did which led to some parties. But prior to that, I was quite anti-social because no one was into what I was and no one wanted to talk about what I wanted to.

Now I love my nerdy self. I dig into new topics of interest. I research well. I do well at trivia games because I know a lot of weird things. I really like that part of me. I am also a bit dorky and geeky, but nerdy is my thing really. I still have imposter syndrome but I am working on it. I want to feel my accomplishments are mine to own. Enjoying the pursuit of knowledge though is a damn fine quality to have. So nerd it up, I say!

Anyway, a lot of those nerdy things, dorky things, and geeky things are what make me an interesting person now.

Other than those two things I value who I was, for sure. But I really lacked the confidence to believe in myself. A trait I still have to less a degree. And my trait for not caring what people think about me… has just become more well-developed over time. And I like that for sure. Because the only opinions that matter about me are from myself and my loved ones. I think we all develop over time. Some things never change. And everything changes. But as we get older we really own who we are and value ourselves for it. While understanding our more negative traits and trying to live authentically while at the same time ensuring those negative traits do not cause problems. Problems we are aware can happen because we learned the hard way.

And I have always loved my personality type but I have never gotten jobs that were well-suited to it so often I rather loathed the work I did. I did well at it, for sure. But facets of it really grated against my personality and I had to sort of fake it to make it. As an adult I rather like the idea of pursuing work that lets my personality shine.

So what did you hate about yourself that you rather value now?

See also

The INTP me
Creativity and depression
Intelligence and belief