Thursday, June 12, 2008

I am socially awkward

My co-workers are extremely social with each other. Like, extremely. They always hang out, and a lot of them also live together. And they hang out ALL the time. Which is baffling to me because (1) we work crazy enough hours and see each other more than anybody else in our lives and (2) I do not understand socially non-awkward people.

I get Evites all the time for people's birthdays and other events. No, this is not a woe-is-me-I-am-so-popular rant. Everybody in the office gets invited to these things, and I know that nobody would even notice if I didn't go. But I am seriously frightened every time one of these things arrives in my inbox. Thus far, I've been actually busy for past events, but now that it's nice out, people are hanging out even more. I mean, I got three Evites today. THREE.

This one guy in my department really encourages me to hang out and network. Obviously, this is terrifying. I mean, it's kind of nice that he notices or cares about my integration at work (and I totally acknowledge that social issues at work are just as important or maybe even more important than actual work issues at work), but whenever he encourages me to branch out, I cringe and mutter whatever feeble excuse I have to not be there.

Finally today, I said to him extremely honestly, "I can't go. I have social anxiety disorder. I'm the mozzarella ball in the Zoloft commercial!" And it was really wonderfully liberating! (And I didn't think it was weird that I said that until Arielle asked me today, "Wait... you SAID that?" Haha. But she laughed.)



That is me. I've always said this. I love that little guy. I don't think it's really healthy to aspire to be that guy, but maybe one day, I can be like THESE guys. They're all having so much fun!



(Haha. I just wanted to use more pictures featuring the Zoloft guys. I just love them so much! But seriously. I'm terrified. Oh well.)

* My younger sister informed me a few years ago that Evites are way antiquated and that Facebook invitations are the way to go. Which makes absolutely no sense to me because not everybody has Facebook but everybody probably has an email address. Weird.