The introvert’s punchline

Hello, friends. Have you seen the “introverts unite” meme?

Or this one:

Or my favourite:

I ask because this week, I became the punchline of my own private joke about introversion.

A couple of days ago, I reviewed my list of Goals for 2016. Now, I am consistently, wildly, hilariously unrealistic optimistic when setting objectives. For example, these are real items from my list:

full draft of Monsoon Season by March (Ha. I am only now about 50% through a first draft.)
full primary series once a week (Um, no. That takes about 90 minutes and a fitness level I cannot yet imagine possessing.)

So it’s not very often that I get to colour in a little bubble on that particular page of my bullet journal. Even so, I like to check in once in a while, if only to gawp at the vast chasm between my expectations and my actual achievements. So imagine my delight when I found the following item:

connect with six new writers

and realized that I could name five! I was nearly there! So I wrote down the five names and, in doing so, had a most unwelcome revelation. Of that list of five writers (who I admire, am thrilled to have met, hope to build friendships with), three approached me. I met the other two on a panel at a festival. That’s right: I didn’t initiate the connection with a single one of those five. Technically, although I am close to checking off that item, I didn’t do a thing to earn it. And I can’t help thinking that this is, at least in part, because I’m an extreme introvert.

So you know what this means, right? I have a little over two months to screw my courage to the sticking place (hoping that I don’t otherwise channel Lady Macbeth) and make a genuine connection with another writer.

Quietly.

From my own home.