Hello dear friends. I love to be here and, yet, do not allow myself the privilege often enough. Recognizing this, I'm here. In my loft -- my virtual mind. But with friends.

A scholar by the name of Kathleen Damiani describes the Dragon as a "binding of the soul, which, like the acorn shell, binds the seed of the life force until conditions are right for the seed to burst the shell apart and grow into the light " (Dr. Damiani has much more to say on the Dragon and on Sophia at her beautiful site, aptly named sophiaandthedragon.com.)

Damiani often captures my experience, and she did it again. I am so bursting that I worry about the people in my path. Now, the bursting isn't beautiful like a sunburst, but it's mean and angry and bent on destruction, intense and focused, like a burning beam reflected off a mirror.

This intensity is lining up with the anticipated launch of my book, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life is Your Hidden Strength (check it out at introvertpower.com). I destroy quite a lot in this book: assumptions that extraversion is the mental health ideal, decades of misinformation about the number of introverts in our society. Yet, writing the book felt more like giving birth, like a creative wave knocked me down and carried me on a joyous excursion beyond the boundaries of our stayed assumptions.

But waves also crash. Waves break boulders into fine sand. Creativity and destruction are partners, passionate and conflictual, but deeply committed.

I can feel my acorn shell cracking around me. The old no longer fits. I don't know what I'll do without my shell, but I know I want out.

As Bette Davis put it in All About Eve, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."