Speak when spoken to

 As you all know, I am a very quiet, untalkative person. There are multiple reasons for this:

• A natural tendency to be shy and introverted
• I inherited a lot of personality traits from my father, and he is also quite quiet
• I know people who love to talk about themselves, or they go off on some esoteric topic that no one else cares about. Cool story bro. I don't want to be that person.
• If it's someone I don't talk to often, I don't know if they will recognize me (especially since I don't wear glasses anymore but sometimes I wear sunglasses, and I had a beard for four years until December 2021)
• Sometimes I simply don't have much to say
• I don't want to bother or annoy people
• I don't think that what I have to say is very important or interesting

Largely because of these last bullets, over the years, I have adopted a general attitude of "speak when spoken to." It is rare for me to initiate a conversation, reach out to someone, or organize a social gathering. If someone tells me "Hit me up sometime," I might say, "Yeah, sounds fun," but internally I think, "Yeah, that's not going to happen." I know people like it when others reach out, but I feel like that doesn't apply to me. "Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby, and I'm a monster on the hill." 

Lately, I've been somewhat going against my general habits.

For example, last week I attended a fireside featuring Peter Breinholt, a singer-songwriter, and David Smurthwaite, a gender-expansive man, put on by Lift + Love, a faith-affirming, identity-affirming organization. I didn't know anyone there, but the people who were there were quite friendly to me when they saw me sitting alone. I had a good conversation with a woman who sat near me. And when another man complimented my heart tie, I told him I recognized him from a website, even though my natural inclination would have been to say "thank you" and nothing else.

Yesterday I ran the Sweethearts 5k at the South Davis Recreation Center, since there aren't a lot of fun things to do in February. (I placed third in my age division, which meant I got a free teddy bear.)

I saw a few people there who I know casually, and it would have been easy to remain incognito in my sunglasses and clean-shaven face. But I decided to say hi to them anyway, despite my poor social skills.

So, yep. That's one of the latest things I'm working on.