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Apologies for being lame with this.  Too many things came up in a row and I fell out of habit.  Fortunately, I have actual content this time.

So, throughout my endeavour to become more social and grow beyond the shyness that defined me through much of growing up I have only been able to measure my success through my own point of view.  I had to rely on comparing memories to tell if I was actually being more social or if it was just something i’d convinced myself of.  Over the last month though, I’ve found two different instances where my perception of progress was reinforced by other people.

First, a couple weeks ago I was at a concert with a friend.  We got there about an hour before the bands went on, so we had time to waste talking.  After a while, she mentioned reading my blog before and asked about my endeavours of self improvement.  Of course this led to a discussion of how I got on the road I am currently travelling, and she was really surprised as I told her how shy I really was growing up.  She always thought I was a really social person from the day I met her.  Granted, I met her after I was a few months into this experiment and she’s a cute girl, so that may have factored into why I came off as so social.  Either way, I’ve managed to keep up the ‘new me’ and supress the typical shyness I have with people.

Second, in late July I was up visiting family and having breakfast with my aunt and grandma.  After talking for a bit, my aunt made a comment to my grandma which hit me pretty hard.  “He never used to talk.”  It was so true.  Growing up, I always shied away from talking with anyone but my close friends unless pressed.  I never worked to keep conversations going and often just found it to hard to.  But now, I had been having a conversation with family that I’ve never talked to for more than 10 minutes at a time for more than an hour.  Talk about signs of progress.

Now that students are back around campus, it seems like a great time to ramp up the social skydiving.  Practice has been my greatest tool so far.  Might as well push a bit harder than usual while it’s easy to do.

Though I may not strike many as someone who likes poetry, there is some that I really enjoy. I’m not one to sit down and read through a book of poetry. The only time I read it is here and there when I find one that seems intriguing. Otherwise, I tend to stick with spoken word. Reading poetry is rigid and emotionless in my head. I think that comes from reading too much philosophy.

Saul Williams came to MSU to do a Q&A and recite some of his poetry. Even when answering questions his words had a poetic hint to them. He talked about how he got into poetry and music, as well as what it was like working with Trent Reznor and what he went through growing up. It was especially interesting hearing him talk about the personal transformation that he put himself through after college.

As he was answering a question about his religious views, he went into a story of how he went through questioning established standards and how he saw things in the world that he didn’t want to become. This motivated him to take charge of his life and how he ended up chronicling much of his journey in his poetry. Hearing this helped me identify with him and gave me a great feeling hearing other people’s stories of their journey.

One thing stuck out to me. At a certain point he was talking about how the Gregorian calendar basically sucks (though he used better words). In this rant, he talked about how the human race has quantified time in such a way that we think in hours and minutes and seconds rather than experiencing moments. His final point along those lines is that we need to re-evaluate and look for “moments instead of minutes.” Those of you who know me in real life know about my “watch.” Usually I don’t get into the philosophy behind my watch because it’s too much explanation for simple conversation, but now I have this simple phrase to say that explains it all.

Ever since I was introduced into the social scene as a kid, I’ve always been rather shy and introverted.  Throughout high school and then in college, I only ever met people through my friends and on rare occasions through class or extra-curricular activities.  I had the same group of friends through high school and struggled maintaining a social circle through the first half of college.  Through no real effort of my own, I was absorbed into a social circle beginning my junior year because of my roommate.  Now that social circle makes up a majority of who I spend my time with outside of work.

I’ve always known that I was not very good at making friends, at times painfully so.  I always tended to get rather anxious when meeting new people and I never warmed up to people very fast.  Like many computer nerds like myself, I took refuge in my room on the internet, which only served to make things worse.

After graduating, I was hit with a rather acute case of 20-something angst.  I took a long look at my life, and realized if I wanted to enjoy things from then on, I would have to make some changes to my social habits.  Since then, progress has been rather slow.

One practice that I’ve found quite useful has been Social Skydiving. The name makes it sound like more than it is.  Simply, social skydiving is the practice of merely saying “hi” to strangers.  This may seem like no big deal, but for me it’s been quite a big step.  Having gone from avoiding eye contact with other students in the dorms, to greeting strangers as I’m walking around town has been quite the eye-opening experience.

I didn’t start straight into talking to strangers though.  At first I took things slow and only made a conscious effort to simply make eye contact with people and smile.  This was the hardest part.  Eye contact can be a pretty powerful thing and can make you feel fabulous or insignificant based on what happens.  Actually saying “hey” to people was a relatively simple transition from the smile.  I’m not incredibly consistent with this yet though.  More often than not, I stick with the smile, though it’s probably somewhere close to 50%.

It’s surprising how effective such a simple thing can be at changing your mindset about things.  I no longer get anxious when talking to new people and I’ll warm up to people over the course of a single night instead of months.

The next hurdle I have is actually making conversation and keeping it going with strangers.  I’m not sure how that fits into the skydiving analogy though.

As a side note: the 30sleeps.com blog is a great resource for this kind of stuff.  I highly recommend it.