I’m halfway through Susan Cain’s Quiet. As promised by what seems like everyone and their mom, it’s a book that instantly understands me. I have to put down my kindle every ten pages, close my eyes and hold a diva fist up to the sky. Preach.

Being an introvert is a lonely life. Not because being alone is lonely, quite the opposite. It’s more that no matter how you cut the butter, we live in a society that encourages extraversion. And while there are a ton of introverts in Silicon Valley, we still play the extravert game: brainstorms, open office plans and long drawn out meetings.

And here’s the problem. My fellow introverts and I are often so burned out by our day to day that when we stop working, we scatter to our respective homes. So while it feels so, so good to hear the world hush to silence when the door closes behind me, it sometimes feels like I’m the only one on the planet.

Lucky for me, we have media. When I’m feeling poetic, I like to think of all the stories as little scarab shells molted off by others, by which I can divine their shape and thoughts. But mostly, I just absorb, absorb, absorb.

Every once in a while, though, something just gets me. It says, in the way that other people and communities have shunned and hissed at you, told you that you’re wanting, well—we’ll take you. You are one of us.

And that is why media is miraculous. You can take your singular experience and beam it into this pattern of pixels and symbols, available for mass consumption. You can wear your tribe around you in a lovely benevolent cloud that never interferes and never leaves.

For your pleasure, these are some things that have been my kin lately:

Quiet, Scandal, Forest for the Trees, Bomb Girls, brainpickings, Mr. Nobody, Phantogram’s Voices, 1200 calories