I’m not very spontaneous. I love to plan things in the sense that I have an internal list of things that I want to get done in a given day or week, and while they may not have a time frame on them, they get done. It is an internal organization that makes senses only to me. When I was younger and visiting a therapist, my therapist called it a “disorganized organization”. And because I do a lot of different things, to many people this makes it appear that I am very detail oriented and schedule driven… but really, I am just disciplined and try to make the best use of my time, even if I don’t know what activity I will be doing in a “work block”. I am also a workaholic, so any down time that’s not “scheduled” before nine pm at night, generally becomes a “work block.”

Planning social events is important to me because I am naturally introverted, and will find something to do on my own if I don’t have anything social planned when done with work. But I generally won’t call someone up and be like “hey, wanna go do this?” on the random if I don’t know them well, aren’t interested in getting to know them better, or fear being rejected. Even so, I don’t like to surprise people more than an hour or so in advance, because usually I get shot down.

Does this automatically make me incompatible with people who are more spontaneous, because I need to plan my social life and won’t generally plan to be social unless it is in advance? What can I do to make my schedule more flexible to accomodate others?