🐌 Are you mad at me? Part Two

Catch up on part one here first:

🐌 Are you mad at me? Part One

Where we left off . . .

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

Perhaps all my 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.

Stress is a systems problem, I hear myself saying. Perhaps that’s why I have dabbled with a CRM—renamed “K.I.T” (high school yearbook style) because the name ~CuStoMeR rElaTIOnShiP maNAger~ gives me hives.

This pairs nicely with a 7,200-word Notion note shared with a friend titled “Saying No,” to help us better manage overwhelm, replete with quotes from famous people’s discernment philosophies, and examples tagged “effective communication.”¹

Once in a Harvest Moon, I feel caught up, satisfied that I am finally pulling my weight. I have achieved some form of inbox zero in alltheplaces.

This lasts for approximately two seconds; then I revert to my natural, inescapable state: perpetual overwhelm and micro-guilt.² Inbox Saṃsāra.

In my most anxious moments, I feel that my capacity for communication—which seems so small compared to so many others—contains a built-in micro-wronging system. It’s only a matter of time before everyone I have crossed paths with becomes disappointed that I haven’t held up my end of the bargain, dismissing me to the outermost realms of their social circles.

In a past life, I must have been a monk or a nun, and too many of their old habits have carried over into this one. Take me back to the monastery!³

Is there an upside to my microscopic social capacity? Only that I prize sustained attention, deep work, reading, and writing. Fabulous! I’m well-suited for a career in media, ha ha ha, which everyone says is dying, at least if one hopes to eke a living out. But that’s a neurosis for another day.

Many of my examples above are about failing to respond, which leaves even less room to proactively reach out. Nurture is a favorite phrase of extroverts and CRMs.

I remember reading Keith Ferazzi’s 2005 bestseller, Never Eat Alone, while gleefully traveling by myself. Who did he write this for? Are normal people able to do this?

In fact, yes. I have a friend who travels frequently for speaking engagements, and he makes sure to never eat alone in cities he visits. For him, beyond nailing the gig, a successful trip also includes booking breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner with friends in the destination.

My policy, all things being equal, save for juuuuust the right spacing of social engagements: always eat alone! Table for one, please!

What could be better than a quiet hotel breakfast, alone, with a good book?

What is more restorative than lunch, alone, at an airy American-New restaurant, awkwardly missing my mouth with the fork while scrolling Substack posts on my iPad or flipping through New Yorker cartoons?

It’s true, some of my best memories in New York City have been dinners with friends. We used to try a new fancy restaurant every Friday, and indeed, these evenings filled my soul. But it was once a week with the same two to three friends. Meanwhile, I was failing to reach out to most everyone else. My cocktail glass was full.

Do I enjoy walk-and-talks and meeting friends new and old over coffee? Yes, of course! Am I grateful when a long-time friend randomly calls me on the little computer in my pocket? Yes!

But am I woefully inadequate at adding to this roster of friends and “nurturing” relationships at a reasonable cadence? Also yes!

Close family and friends are my lifeblood, as all the research shows. Without community we wither, and I know I have won the lottery to have mine in my life.

I have never harbored a fear of dying alone, and I try my best to live without regret.

But there are two regrets of the dying that I can’t quite seem to square: by far the most frequent that former palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware cites is, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Fourth on the list: “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”

Thus, when the truth of all this asserts itself in my midnight anxiety, I resignedly admit: yes, you are probably mad at me, or at the very least disappointed, or at best—annoyed. “What a flake, that Jenny Blake!”

And yet, in the social-capacity reality of my constitutional make-up, I have no clue what to do about it without abandoning myself.

If I did that, I would have even less to give.

And then I would be mad at me, too.⁴

❤️

1. For more hilarity on saying no, check out

Letters of Note

’s collection from famous curmudgeons:

I hate everybody including you

2. See also: One of my favorite Free Time conversations with

Madeleine Dore

:

183: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt with Madeleine Dore

3. The one time I did a five-day silent retreat, I felt like a fish dropped back into the ocean. I also got in trouble with the instructors for reading I Am That and writing in my journal in the public spaces. Oops. I couldn’t resist the life of letters even when I was supposed to be doing nothing but staring out of the windows.

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