Introverts, Depression, and Awareness

Image by <a href=”https://pixabay.com/users/johnhain-352999/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=1250870">John Hain</a> from <a href=”https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=1250870">Pixabay</a>

I am an Introvert, I have clinical depression that is mainly controlled, and frankly, the lockdown has been mostly great for me. I can work from home, whether writing articles, writing fiction, writing software for someone else, or writing software for myself. In all these cases, I can interact with people most of the time via text, email, and brief phone or video calls. The critical point is short. While I haven’t been doing well financially, I have been doing well emotionally and physically health-wise, which is a significant change for me.

I hadn’t realized how important the reduced personal interaction was until I got a longer-term contract a couple of weeks ago. This contract was with a “real” client who wasn’t through my business but through a standard contracting house. Because of this client’s “real” nature, they expected not just daily standup meetings. Meetings that I probably could have dealt with. However, they also scheduled an average of 2–5 hours per day of ongoing meetings every day for as long as I was on the project.

These meetings were bracketed with impromptu chats where team members poked me every time I wasn’t showing up as busy in a meeting by checking up on me. Frankly, it was keeping me from accomplishing anything and drove me to the point of illness. After avoiding COVID and anything but minor sniffles last winter, I got Strep…