Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes

by Jessica Pan

My confidence was dangerously high. Like, tall-American-men-after-four-beers high. Maybe I could really do this.

The simile here 🤣

“Nobody waves—but everybody waves back.”

I don’t want to be shit. And I certainly don’t want to be shit at being shit.

It’s difficult to maintain that sense of wonder in the city where you are settled. Sure, every now and then you glance up and notice the astonishing beauty of the trees you scuttle past every day on the way to the supermarket, or feel a glow of pleasure as you settle in a beloved café down the road from your apartment, but most of the time we’re too caught up in our daily lives to really notice. Traveling abroad reboots that setting in our brains.

I blink and suddenly remember a troubling quote from the TV show 30 Rock: “Never follow a hippie to a second location.”

But the self-care trend has extroverts pursuing introvert activities to help them relax and reflect—so why shouldn’t we introverts do the same? When we need to be loud and social and outgoing, we can steal their traits when we need them. We don’t even have to be bitten by a radioactive extrovert to gain their powers.