introverts en masse

[erf_]

I guess I should write about my day, huh.

(Even though it's over, and a new one has already begun. Stupid off-kilter unemployed sleep cycle.)

The Brooklyn Book Festival was pretty neat! I guess I was expecting something like a trade show or a convention, what with Brooklyn having a huge and storied literary scene, but it turns out it was both

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[erf_]

I'm all too familiar with that kind of twelve-hour nightmare, and that's why I generally get rid of as much stuff as possible well before I move. Ugh. Never again...

You're right about the shifting gears thing. It's a little discouraging how easy it is to piss off strangers by being the wrong person at the wrong time. Sometimes when I greet strangers about something they like or something they're doing they give me this "wait why the fuck are you talking to me" look--women in particular almost always assume I'm being sleazy or hitting on them, no matter how harmless, platonic, unintrusive, and non-threatening I try to be. On the other hand sometimes people do the same thing to me, and I'm so caught off guard that they misinterpret "agh! you wandered into my monkeysphere!" as "fuck off," and I lose an opportunity to have a friendly conversation. Even when such an encounter goes well it usually lasts only a couple seconds--I've lost track of how many two-sentence conversations I've had. Like this:

(at Forbidden Planet)
Me: Dude, Iron Man is so badass in that trade.
Stranger: I know, right?
(both walk away)

At an anime convention or at college, that would be the opener to a friendly conversation. In real life, not so much. People are too busy to chat with strangers...

There's also this thing with groups, where they're so close-knit that if you do as much as wander into their shared space they all give you this look as if they want to say, "excuse me, but do we know you?" At concerts, especially...I don't want to be that sketchy stranger that groups of people smirk and trade snide comments about on the way home.

I think I will have to try again with the picnic thing, taking your advice into account.