Introversion

The primary difference between an extrovert and an introvert is the preferred way in which a person experiences their reality. Extroverts experience and interact with their world by outward means while an introvert experiences and interacts with their world through inward, reflexive means. Everyone does both, but most do one more than the other.

I've found that time alone on my bicycle is a form of introversion for me. I am reflecting on my day, on my body, on my emotions, on my physical self in a very intimate way. However, this introversion turns into a highly extroverted self when I am riding with friends. Reflection of this time conveys a ratio of introversion and extroversion when I ride, and my estimate is that it runs somewhere in the neighborhood of 75:25% of the time - this clearly makes riding an introverted activity for me.

Perhaps I need this time for myself, a time where I am auditing my emotions, my actions, and thinking. It's a time of observation without judgement; reflection without regrets. When I began my journey to be a competitive athlete I found it easy to get down on myself - I used the time on my bike as a way for me to get angry for not being better at it, and I never enjoyed it. It was about my ego, it was about beating up on people, it was about talking a talk.

Riding my bike is fun - initially, this wasn't evident. In fact, in almost every sport I've done, initially they sucked. Swimming is my first experience with this. When I began as a Frosh high schooler, I hated it. But by the end of my sophomore season I would spend the last three periods of the school day dreaming of diving into a lane and eating up some yardage. It became my release from being in a military school, from the oppressive shit I had to deal with, I introverted my experiences to focus on streamlining my form, perfecting the kick turn, propelling myself as far as I could with three graceful butterfly kicks.

Nobody could touch me beneath the water. I couldn't hear the harassment about being queer. I didn't have to stare at some poor underclassmen and scream at him, hit him, or be an otherwise brutal fuck-tard because that was how "men" dealt with shit. My battle was with the water, my form and soft rhythmic breathing was my weapon.

Like I say, I don't ride my bike to race, I race because I ride my bike. It would be an awful waste of fitness not to race. I've got it, so why not use it for something - racing is not a verification or even a validation. In a race my riding becomes extroverted - I extend this to all sport in fact, competition is an extroverted activity for me - it's not a natural state of affairs to have people around me watching, riding my wheel, trying to drop me. Vise versa, it's not natural for me to want to drop others, grab wheels or attack. I just want to ride. Sometimes I race and I ride away from everyone else. There's no attack, there's no moment of oh-my-god he's railing it and I can't hold on. It's just a moment, usually on a climb, where I look around and nobody else is there. I'm not doing it on purpose, I just found that sought after introverted concentration and forgot I was racing.

If life were a race you'd see me doing this quite a bit. In order for me to do well at something I need to introvert and find that form. Be it riding, swimming, programming, writing - they all have a form, they all have a rhythm. Life is form and rhythm. In life the nexus between two people becomes form and rhythm. Your relationship to yourself and your work is form and rhythm. Your thinking follows a form and a rhythm.

Maybe you don't realize it yet, but there's a pattern in your process. The form of your thinking and the rhythm of your schedule - it's all patterned - patterned to the same extent that I can know in a race there will be attack after attack, then it'll be easy once a break clears, then shit will shatter on the hill. It's a form that follows a pattern, only revealed when I introvert and observe the little nuances of life.