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Being Socially On Is A Full-Time Job

Gerald Washington
3 min readJan 7, 2022
Photo by Krzysztof Hepner on Unsplash

So today at work, I was listening to a co-worker (who loves to talk!) riff for three hours straight! It was irritating on my brain hearing them just fire words out of their mouth like a machine gun. At the same time, it made me wish I had that gift where I can just riff for hours to anyone..anytime…anywhere.

Sigh. Some days, if you’re like me, you have those moments where you’re in a groove socially. You (and the person you’re talking to) are bouncing off each other really well which makes your day feel like a successful one. Then there are days where, if you get off to a bad start socially, it’s hard to ever get into a social rhythm for the remainder of the day.

It makes it worse when you see people you know, just talking so naturally without any social hiccups, making you think ‘’I wish I could socialize like that’’.

So you start socializing in your head to prepare you for social situations that will arise. When the time comes to speak, you’re ready (so you hope). You’re talking with a friend & the conversation is going well, everything in your head is flowing out of your mouth, until, it isn’t.

Your friend throws a hail mary pass that you weren’t prepared for. Your head & your mouth have disconnected from each other. You feel like a failure for not being able to keep up socially anymore.

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Gerald Washington
Gerald Washington

Written by Gerald Washington

Just a curious writer/blogger trying to navigate a complex world. Sharing my words helps a lot with that.

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