Creatives as Extroverted Introverts

In one of my first few weeks at college, my new roommates and I decided to order pizza. There were three of us, so negotiating toppings and crust styles was a challenge, but eventually we agreed and the time came to call in the order. "Oh, I don't want to call," S. said. "Me neither," T. added. They both looked at me.

Prior to matching us up as roommates, we'd had to fill out a personality profile. The housing service then attempted to match up people of similar temperaments. It was clear that they were a little too good at their jobs when it came to us. I didn't want to call the pizza place either.

Maybe it's because I was an only child and had become accustomed to fending for myself, or maybe it was because there is a small part of me that really is extroverted, but either way I volunteered to place the call despite my discomfort. My desire for pizza trumped my fear of calling a strange pizza place in a strange town. I swallowed my fear and got the job done.

My whole life has been like that. There's nothing I would like more than to curl up at home and work solo, rarely, if ever, interacting with others outside my small circle of close family and friends. I've always had the impression that dealing with other people takes extra energy that would be better spent on creative endeavors. And yet, I keep finding myself in positions where I need to interact with other people in order to achieve my goals, and I make myself do it. So does that make me an introvert or an extrovert? I never did know how to answer those questions on the Meyers-Briggs. (Although somehow it still manages to peg me as an INTJ each and every time.)

Recently, I've heard other creative people say similar things: they'd really prefer to be left alone, but either their creative process requires some collaboration with others, or their final product isn't fully realized until it's made public and others can react to it. Our drive to create forces us to become extroverted at least when it comes to realizing our pet projects. Maybe this doesn't apply to all creative people -- Emily Dickinson comes to mind -- but as one published author said recently on one of the many podcasts I listen to, it's a pretty rare writer who actually manages to put words on paper but who doesn't, somewhere in the smallest recesses of her mind, hope that her words will be public someday.

So, could there possibly be a personality type such as "extroverted introverts," people who prefer introversion but who willingly become extroverted for specific purposes? I think there must be, because I don't seem to be alone in the world. Someone's got to have documented this somewhere. Time to surf the web....