Socializing is hard. I’ve spent years being the shy person, the introverted one who needs a bit of time to get to know you, before reaching the point where I can actually tolerate talking with you. I’ve never enjoyed it, although I did attempt to get better and from what I hear and feel – I did get significantly better. But well when you start from 0 even a bit of improvement feels something. However there are still things I fuck up. This is a blog post to remind myself to improve on those.
Stop Interrupting.
I have that annoying tendency of interrupting people and trying to guess what they want to say. In hindsight this is rude. I should always let the person I am speaking to tell me what they want in their own terms, and do not interrupt them.
Stop Jumping From Topic to Topic
I do this sooooooooooo often and in this case I definitely blame the online chat. In most chats online you can do that and the conversation will continue and will not derail, as you can just go back and read it a bit later. In offline, face to face chat this is a huge no.
Accept Whatever You Get
I feel like this is a point I have done quite well, but there is still some work to do. Whatever reaction I get to what I said – I should treat it as the expected reaction. If I say something that I thought it’s funny but did not elicit laughter – well I should accept it as it was not funny. It might be funny but we might not share the same sense of humor. Related to this… I should definitely stop making as many jokes, especially in times where humor gets to be my defense mechanism when the topic is hard/rough. It’s not always appreciated.
Never Ever Ever Ever Ghost
My worst mistake. This is what I am actively working on. There has been so many times where I was working on something, busy with something and I received a message somewhere, be it work or personal. So many times I’ve left it on just read, but I think this is one of my biggest mistakes and negative attitude. Everyone deserves a response. I am working hard on never being that busy to not be able to respond at least acknowledging the message.