---
title: My Abusive Relationship With Baseball
description: User Illusion is SW Hammond’s long-running digital escape — essays, short stories, cultural criticism, memes, and memory fractals exploring the human hustle, the stories we tell ourselves, and the gap between appearance and what’s actually there.
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17 February 2015

## Introverts: Steady The Pendulum

As I’ve become older, out of my twenties for a couple of years, I’ve found myself settling into a pattern of reveling in solitude. When I was younger, I had to be plugged in. There was a driving force behind finding someone, anyone, to meet up with for a movie or drinks. It didn’t matter who it was with or what we were doing, as long as I had a story to share the next day. Inside I felt like I was “loser” if I didn’t go out. Somehow I had failed if I didn’t have plans. I’m not sure if it was o…