🐌 Are you mad at me? Part One

A five-point checklist of neurosis

“Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.

. . . Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.”

―

Susan Cain

, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Are you mad at me? You might be. If not now, soon you will be. It’s only a matter of time before I disappoint you.

If I wake up after four a.m., I find myself in a state of rapture, better than Christmas morning as a kid. The house is silent, the lights are off, and as I flick the coffee maker’s glowing orange switch before even taking a sip of water, I begin anticipating which book to read. The morning is mine—all mine!—to read and think and write in blissful, focused quiet.

But if I awake in the middle of the night, say between twelve-thirty and 3:45 a.m., well, that’s when my neurosis kicks in.

I can cycle through any one of 150 friends near and far, paranoia seeping into my impressionable half-asleep mind, to identify how I have wronged them. Not on purpose, mostly by neglect.

It would take more therapy than I am willing to submit to right now to determine exactly where this people-pleasing paranoia originated or what to do about it. My go-to source for unpacking these topics is

Natalie Lue

, who is always a voice of reason and wisdom. Her book, The Joy of Saying No, is a must-read.¹

It could be chalked up to being a highly sensitive person who is easily overstimulated. The world is built for extroverts,

Susan Cain

famously said in her viral 2012 TED Talk and bestselling book, Quiet, to a collective sigh of relief for so many of us.²

✅ Let's run through a checklist:

1. Did I miss a message you sent to one of the social media inboxes I never check? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn? Don’t get me started on Substack also launching DMs. I’m sorry that I never replied, if so. I just can’t keep up, and no, I don’t want to pay someone to do it for me.
   

2. Has your email been languishing in one of my three main inboxes for longer than you would like? I sincerely apologize! I know it’s there, because I scan over it on a daily basis, waiting for just the right energetic circumstances to respond. Maybe I’ll just get through a few calls first, but by the time those are over, I have nothing left to give. And you deserve my best energy!
   
   My unrealistic aspiration is to reply to each message with quality, care, and good vibes (the girlies love the vibes). On most days I am too overwhelmed by the ever-climbing digital stack that I save your special message for tomorrow, always tomorrow.

   Instead, today I will write or publish something so that more people can find me and my work, so that more people can email! Oops, I see the error in my logic, too.
   
   Maybe all my creative efforts are merely filling a leaky boat. Maybe I should just admit and accept that I’m a one-star friend to most. When people apologize to me for their slow response time, I offer a blanket permission slip to never worry on my behalf. “I put the snail back into email!” I say with a laugh-cry.
   

3. Did I forget to respond to your text or voice memo? I have a rotating unread text notification of 40 to 60 to 133 on any given day. I get so overwhelmed by the need to stop what I’m doing (reading, thinking, writing, walking Ryder, talking to a neighbor, spending quality time with Michael, sleeping) that when a new text comes in angling for instantaneous attention, I tell myself that I will check and respond later, ideally in batches . . . and then I forget.
   
   Then I get overwhelmed. And then guilty. I don’t know where to start. Many friends have given up on texting me at all, and I wonder if they’d even call me a friend anymore. It’s a social grace I simply haven’t figured out, despite fifteen years of failing trying.
   
   In this regard, I might have been a better fit for the Victorian era, a life of letters with fountain pens and wax seals (I still use the latter). Or the life of bestselling author Ann Patchett, who never messed with that whole cell phone business in the first place (is this still true?!).
   

4. Did I forget to reach out and/or send a gift on your birthday, your anniversary, your kid’s birthday, your launch day/week/month? If so, I’m sincerely sorry, and I am celebrating with you in spirit!
   
   Did I forget to send a thank you card for a beautiful gift that you sent me? Please know how much I appreciated it! It most certainly made my day when it arrived.
   

5. Have I neglected to reply to a thoughtful comment you left on an earlier post? If so, I hope you know how much they mean to me! Sometimes my vulnerability hangover is so high that I can’t parse out how or when to respond to each one, but I’m afraid that if I admit that, you will stop leaving them at all. I am thankful for every one of you reading, and to those who take the time to respond, thoughtfully building on what I have written. It expands my thinking and encourages me to keep going, even when all I can muster is a simple “heart” reaction in response.
   
   Meanwhile, I’ll be over here kicking myself for all the great writing that *I* read and fail to comment on. How do you do it? I can’t stand thumb-typing on my phone or iPad, and I worry that if I don’t have anything profound to add to their already brilliant piece, I might as well not say anything at all. I’m deeply grateful when I receive comments, even as I frequently fail to reciprocate the very thing I hold dear.
   
   This is one of the biggest reasons I stopped tweeting actively in 2013—and 95% of my social media activity shortly after that, save for short bursts during book launches, with thanks to a social media team.³ I hated the feeling of shouting from my soapbox into the infinite void stream, yet failing to regularly read and respond to the comments people left in return. I felt like a one-sided jerk. I wasn’t holding up my end of the community-building bargain.

Do the notifications in the bottom left of my phone screen give you hives?

🫣 Are you mad at me? Let’s get more serious:

• Did I say something to offend you? Did I commit a faux pas that has you simmering in quiet rage and scorning my very name? It’s possible. When I wake up too early in the night I imagine all kinds of these scenarios.
  

• Did one friend cancel me because I wouldn’t speak for free at their event involving plane travel at a time I couldn’t afford the time, energy, or money? Is the other friend mad because I couldn’t make their destination wedding a decade ago for the same reasons? It’s possible, as I haven’t spoken with either of them much since. Or maybe it’s just that I forgot to type HBD on their Facebook wall, or reply to that same memo x 100 on mine? Or apologize profusely enough at the time?
  

• Is it because I didn’t invite you to my podcast at the right moment for your launch, one that wouldn’t have created any discernible bump for you anyway given my audience numbers?
  

• After meeting up in person (finally!), did I forget to follow up at the appropriate interval to check in because I’m already overwhelmed with communication? (Yes, almost certainly.)
  

• Are you annoyed because you are learning so much about my life online and in my now-paused podcasts, and yet I know so little about yours? This has been a sore spot in several-a-friendship since I first started blogging twice a week in 2008, compounded by not catching their updates (or sharing mine) on social media. People only found out I got married when I told them in person. I loved seeing their reactions face-to-face! The only wedding photo that exists publicly is behind the paywall in one of the earliest Doh posts, posted five years after the big day.
  

• Did I fail your event participants by lulling them to sleep? Those thousand-plus people I couldn’t see when delivering a virtual keynote you paid handsomely for, as I stared at my own face on a laptop screen for an hour without the faintest clue how any of it was going over? (This kept me up for weeks.)

What would it be like, I often wonder, to be a naturally extroverted social butterfly? How many more—and stronger—professional connections would I have? How many more clients?

Perhaps all my Rolling in Doh woes stem from this very shortcoming, moving through the world with the social capacity of a teacup while others have a 40-ounce Stanley.

You might be wondering, Why don’t you put yourself out of your misery already and reach out to all these people to simply ask if they are, in fact, mad at you?!

Keep reading part two, where I’ll fail toward an explanation for that, too.⁴

🐌 Are you mad at me? Part Two

❤️

1. You might also enjoy my conversation with

Natalie Lue

for the Pivot podcast:

329: Five Types of People-Pleasers from The Joy of Saying No with Natalie Lue

2. Check out

Susan Cain

’s Substack,

The Quiet Life with Susan Cain

3. I’m forever grateful to

Stephanie Huston

for helping me spread the word about my work! Check out her new ‘stack here:

Make Social Media Fun Again

and apply promo code JENNY for 10% off any of their services :)

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