The joy of meeting other awkward people is that they are too busy worrying that they, too, are the MOST AWKWARD HUMAN EVER!

I LOVE having something to do at parties/gatherings, and I love being behind a check-in thing at events. I was "in charge" of the cake at my BFF's wedding, and that was nice too. I am not sure if it is my innate personality, or the fact that I started working as a cashier at 15, so I have LOTS of scripts for what to say in those situations.

I often feel terribly shy when I meet Buffistas in person, sadly. I mean, you'd think that I'd be able to talk to people I've spoken to online daily for 12 years, but sometimes, no.

Me too, sometimes.

Yeah, the one time I met Plei I was totally awkward and had trouble making conversation.

Yeah, sometimes I feel like the clever, fun part of my brain just shuts down when I'm making f2f conversation.

Relatedly, I recently learned that introversion and social anxiety are not the same thing. Now I'm wondering how much of my difficulty socializing is due to social anxiety and how much is introversion.

I always loved working the check in desk at really big SCA events, like multi-day wars and such. You had a reason to talk to people in process of doing soemthing else.

Amy, that night I knew you and I was with Nicole and K-Bug so jumping in was easy. You didn't see me asking questions or anything. I can be extroverted in spurts but I value my alone time. Shoot, that is part of the reason I love working at home.

Ha. That's why I'm a little freaked out about when I eventual meet my new music buddy. Because I think he's way OTT extrovert and the bouncy manic kind of extrovert as well. But because we've only ever had fb messaging conversations, he thinks I'm, you know, interesting and have opinions and stuff. But I'm pretty sure I will be way less interesting to him in person! He'll just have to know all that stuff is going on behind my eyes and it only comes out through fingertips and not lips.

That sounded porny.

But I meant written words instead of verbal.

You knew what I meant.

It probably sounds worse now that I talked about it.

Ok, stopping now.

Anyway, where I was headed with all of that was that, I generally do ok with y'all in person, but it's just because of all the backstory. I don't have to ask awkward questions about your children, because I know about your children. (And then I can talk to your children and your children like me because I like Avatar. I mean, purely hypothetically.)

Which isn't to say that I don't often feel entirely awkward and uncomfortable, it's just that I know that at this point, you don't mean me ill, so I can blaze past the feeling and get to the bit of having fun hanging out with people I already like.

I often feel terribly shy when I meet Buffistas in person, sadly. I mean, you'd think that I'd be able to talk to people I've spoken to online daily for 12 years, but sometimes, no.

This is so me. I also find it weird to meet someone for the first time when I already know all this stuff about them. And I find the whole IRL name/board name thing weird.

I can be extroverted in spurts but I value my alone time.

Like me!

What I love is that Buffistas know how to do alone time together.

what's the term for someone who is very much an extrovert, but absolutely needs a certain amount of alone time/down time?

That's me too, although I think for me the line isn't socializing/alone time, it's need-to-cope/others-can-cope. More than alone time I just need down time, but I'm totally fine if down time involves hanging with friends while someone else plans dinner.

I also seem to be singular in my opinion that the time I spend on this board feels like socializing with others, not being alone. But maybe that's part of why b.org works so well, the extroverts can come by and socialize and the introverts can hang out without feeling like they have to put themselves out there.