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I am part of that strange subspecies of mankind labelled The Introvert. My idea of attending a party is to find myself an inviting looking couch and park myself there for the remainder of the evening. (This usually works relatively well as most ‘normal’ humans rotate stations every ten minutes or so – ensuring I see or talk to a decent cross-section of attendees over the course of an evening).
Unlike those blessed with the art of conversation, when talking, my grey matter is working overtime attempting to scrape together potential conversational topics. The starting points are easy ‘How’s it going?’ ‘What’s new?’ ‘How is such and such?’ It’s once the easy questions have run out that things become more challenging. Then I have to start remembering. What is their name again? What do they do for a job? Was it this person that got married the other month? Nope. Can’t remember. So I can’t talk about that then.
Naturally, I start talking about myself – it’s the only way I feel I keep this conversation from taking a tragic nosedive. Only problem is I don’t really want to talk about myself. I struggle to articulate what I want to say. Frankly, the way I’m selling myself is worse than a used car salesman on a bad hair day. I default to the same old speech ‘I work’, ‘I study’, ‘I’m doing this crazy diet’, … and because I feel like a broken record I come across as uninteresting and perhaps even a little grumpy. I am of course aware of this, so start thinking about it while I’m talking and matters go from bad to worse. Don’t get me wrong, not all introverts are like this. But when you are introverted, shy and anxious all rolled into one, it makes for a very interesting evening. All I can say is thank god for smart phones.
