People of the world: Shut up!

Returning to normal service.

An old article about introverts, written for extroverts. And then a companion interview with the writer three years later.

They made me think about this whole "being an introvert" lark, and how it affects me. The answer was obvious: It makes me hate everybody.

I already only play along with the bare minimum of small talk I can get away with - I try and avoid getting into Fine Loops ("Hi, how are you?" "Fine, how are you?" "Fine, how are you?" ), I avoid the normal gossip fora (aka I don't smoke), and I've taken being contrary about the weather to get people to stop talking to me about it.

Sadly, I don't think all of my hatred of everyone is down to pure introversion. No, parts of it are devilgreen jealousy at the ease of their talkings. Damn them for making me envy them!

Plus they think I'm arrogant. Just because I'm better than them doesn't mean they should revert to name calling.

Hand me my leisure suit.

So there I was, Valentine's Day, and single. Again.

Though I suppose you could call it a return to tradition, as, excluding last year, I had managed (in many different ways) to be single every year. Like any good traditions, this one has bizarrely rituals associated with it. In my case, it involves picking whatever the most "romantic" movie of the day is, and buying a seat on removed from other bookings, hence using up as much "couple-space" as possible.

It's petty, hateful and vindictive, but I do it anyway.

But that's not all: you see it's a two-part tradition. The second part involves me moping about why I have no ability to find semi-happy companionship. And this year was no different, just with a twist.

You see, I realised that I have only ever been interested in eight women. By interested, I don't mean "she looks nice, I'd like to shiver me timbers with her". No, I’m a bloody-minded romantic, so I only think of the “big love”. Also, not everyone I have been out with makes this list. Sad but true.

Anyway, without the names, here are some random facts:

6 were brunette, 2 blonde.
All of them were shorter than me.
All of them were relatively small breasted.
All bar two were more extroverted than me.
None were stupid.
Only two of them a legitimately great faces, even though I consider myself a face guy.
Only two (with a possible third) filled the geek stereotype.
Half were gregarious.
I considered all of them too cool/good/pretty for me.
As of today, I’m still in contact with just two of them.


It’s a pretty unremarkable list. Except for the fact that none of them were pretty but stupid. The fact that I’m not interested in pretty vacant people fills me with bizarre pride. That they’re probably not interested in me only fills me with self-loathing.

Sadly I suffer some sort of cognitive dissonance regarding my inner romantic. I believe in freedom, truth, beauty and above all thing love. But my inner cynic (an uncomfortable neighbour) knows that the concept of perfect love is, at best, unlikely. There are x many fish in the sea and all that.

Still, in a few things the romantic wins. This is one of them – forcing me to wait, occasionally look, and blindly hope for Love. capital letter and all.

And, oh, how I hate it.