by Jessica Pan
Also by Jessica Pan, with Rachel Kapelke-Dale
Graduates in Wonderland
For Ian—
Wŏ ài nĭ
Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction
The Sauna, a Story or Rock Bottom
Talking to Strangers or New People
Shaking in the Spotlight or Stage Fright
Heart Problems, A Real-Life Interlude
In Search of the One or Friend-Dating
Crowd Control or Networking
The Wedding in Germany, A Real-Life Interlude
Free-Falling or Improvisation
Everest or Stand-up Comedy
Talking to Men, A Real-Life Interlude
La-La Land or Traveling Solo
scotch Courage or Stand-up Comedy, Round II
Introvert into the Woods, A Real-Life Interlude
Redemption or Stand-up Comedy, Round III
Come Dine with Me or Hosting a Dinner Party
Introvert. Extrovert. Convert? Conclusion
A Note on Introversion and Methodology
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Author’s Note
Let’s be clear: I don’t think anybody—introvert, extrovert, or otherwise—needs to be cured. But I was, for a while, an unhappy introvert, and I wanted to see how my life might change if I spent a year undertaking daunting new experiences. This book is about what happened next. Please enjoy my nightmares.
Introduction
There are two types of people in this world. Those who watch Glastonbury (the largest music festival in the UK—and the world—jam-packed full of hundreds of thousands of people) on TV from afar as though it’s a horror movie. They peer over the top of the blanket as they bear witness to the muddy hellhole. They sigh from relief at the sheer joy of missing out, because they are so happy to be on their sofas and not there, surrounded by thousands of swaying, loud, drunk people with full bladders and greasy hair.
And then there are those who choose to go to Glastonbury. I am not one of those people.
My friends at college threw me a surprise party for my twenty-second birthday. As soon as everyone jumped out of the dark, I burst into tears. People at the party thought I was touched. Actually, I was horrified. For the first time in months, the tears weren’t because I was in unrequited love with my Spanish language tutor. Good friends, family, and some vague acquaintances were sitting on my bed—which was incidentally the very place I usually went to escape from those good friends, family, and vague acquaintances.
I had nowhere to hide. They were here for a party. How long until they left?
Eventually, I just turned on all the lights and waited for everyone to take the hint.
If you’re like me, then you, too, know what it feels like to dread your own birthday parties. You fear giving speeches, team bonding exercises, and every single New Year’s Eve.
I feel this way because I’m an introvert. Actually, I’m a shy introvert (more on this later), and any shy introvert worth their salt has invariably done the following: thrown a ringing phone across the room, faked being sick, walked into a networking event and immediately backed out, and pretended not to speak English when approached in a bar. That last one is advanced level but the most effective method of all. The rest are necessary survival skills. We are also gifted at avoiding eye contact to deter people from saying hello with a technique I like to call “dead robot eyes.”
I would say 90 percent of my acquaintances don’t even know that I’m an introvert because I take such pains to hide it. After-work drinks? Sorry, I’m very busy. Lunch at the deli? Can’t, I have plans (eating ramen alone in blissful solitude). Coworkers just think that inside the office I’m distracted and that outside the office I have both a full social calendar and debilitating face blindness.
Now that I’m older and wiser, on the morning of every birthday, I gently wake up my husband, Sam, and whisper in his ear, “If you throw me a party, I will murder you.” He always nods obligingly, half asleep. Except he doesn’t really get it, because he’s a different breed altogether—a quiet person who likes going to a busy pub and hanging out at festivals. But he’s grown used to most of our nights out ending with my hissing, “Get my coat and meet me by the elevators!” while I sprint toward the back exit to escape an approaching tipsy bachelorette party that has just arrived at the bar.
Sam goes along with it, but the depths of my neuroses are a foreign country to him. He doesn’t understand why, for example, I prefer dogs to people. But that’s easy. Dogs don’t require small talk, they don’t judge you, and they don’t hum near your desk while you’re trying to work. They don’t ask when you’re going to have kids. Or cough on you. But to Sam, dogs have wild eyes, might put their dirty paws all over you, and are ready to strike at any moment, which is exactly how I feel about humans.
I assumed that life as a shy introvert would go on this way for me forever. But then, something unusual happened: I found myself roasting in a sauna, clutching a copy of Men’s Health, wearing a full-length black tracksuit, and weeping as I yelled profanities at a spa employee.
And something had to change.
That’s the short version.
✽ ✽ ✽
Some people are great at talking to strangers, building new relationships, and making friends at parties. I’m really good at other things, like loitering palely in dark doorways. Disappearing into couch corners. Leaving early. Feigning sleep on public transportation.
Nearly a third of the population (at least, depending on which study you consult) identify as introverts, so it’s likely that this could describe you, too. If we’d, say, met at a party that neither of us had flaked on, we could bond over this while hiding in the kitchen near the cheese board.
There are a lot of heated debates about what defines an introvert or an extrovert. The main accepted definition is that introverts get their energy from being alone, whereas extroverts get their energy from being around other people. But psychologists often discuss two other related parameters: shy versus outgoing. I always assumed that all introverts were shy, but apparently some introverts can be ultraconfident in groups or capable of smoothly delivering presentations. What makes them introverts is that they just can’t take stimulation and large crowds for extended periods of time.1
And I am shy: I’m afraid of making contact with strangers and being the center of attention, but I also need time to recharge after being around a lot of people and loathe large crowds. I am, as one article defined it, a “socially awkward introvert.” A shy introvert, or shintrovert, as I shall henceforth refer to myself (which is also a pervert who is very into lower legs).
I don’t know whether shintroverts are born or made, but for me, my tendencies began to show very early on. I grew up in a small town in Texas where I skipped birthday parties, faked illnesses to avoid school presentations, and spent many nights journaling about a parallel universe where interacting with multiple people and occasionally being the center of attention weren’t my worst nightmare.
As a kid, I didn’t understand why I felt so differently about life from my extroverted immediate family. My father is Chinese, and my mother is Jewish American, and they both love two things deeply: Chinese food and chatting with new people. Meanwhile, my two older brothers were always inviting big groups of their friends over to our house, where they’d linger for hours. I originally thought they were all just better at pretending to like the things I hated. Later, I was confounded: why did they lo
ve meeting big groups of new people and socializing for hours and throwing big birthday parties when I didn’t? I thought that there was something deeply wrong with me.
Still, growing up in a small town, I dreamed of a bigger life full of new experiences. But it wasn’t a life I could envisage for myself there. I wanted an entirely clean slate. A new place where I could reinvent myself, free from anyone who knew me. I tried Beijing, then Australia, and eventually London, where I live now.
But one thing remained constant during these travels: no matter how far-flung the lands, I remained essentially the same. A shintrovert. Dumplings, shrimp on the barbie, scones and cream. Shintrovert eating in the corner. The Forbidden City, Sydney Opera House, Tower of London. Shintrovert hovering in doorways. I’d thought that maybe foreign lands would shake the introversion out of me, but, like my eczema, it thrived in all climates.
And then came the “Quiet Revolution,” sparked by Susan Cain’s best-selling book in 2012. Within its pages, I read that one out of every two or three people is an introvert. That there was nothing wrong with us. That introverts, to paraphrase, concentrate well, relish solitude, dislike small talk, love one-on-one conversations, avoid public speaking. Shy, sensitive homebody, you say? Damn right I am!
I was enormously relieved to read these things and decided to embrace this side of myself. This is who I was. Rather than beating myself up for the person I wasn’t, I chose to celebrate the person I was. After all, my disposition is one reason I became a writer, and it meant that I had very close relationships with my small group of friends during this time.
Then in the space of a year, it all went wrong. I became unemployed, and my closest friends moved away. My career had stagnated, I was lonely, and I lost the desire to run; I had no idea what to do next in my life. In truth, I wanted to pull my old trick and hop on a plane and begin a new life, perhaps this time as someone named Francesca Buckingham. But it was abundantly clear that I didn’t have the personality, confidence, or hat collection to pull this off.
I had a lot of time to sit around and ponder: what did I really want from life? Really, I wanted a job, some new friends whom I felt truly connected to, and more confidence. Was that so much to ask? Surely not. So what were other people out there with jobs and close friends and rich, fulfilling lives doing that I wasn’t? Eventually, and with mounting fear, I realized: they were having new experiences, taking risks, making new connections. They were actually out there, living in the world instead of staring out at it.
I once overheard my former coworker Willow talking about her trip to New York. Willow had stopped to pet a woman’s dog in Prospect Park: she ended up spending the day with the woman, going to a jazz club with her until 4 a.m., and later landing her dream job through one of her new friend’s connections. She’d met her boyfriend in a line for the bathroom at a festival. She discovered she had hypoglycemia by talking to a doctor at a party. Her entire life has been shaped by these random encounters. All because she chooses to talk and listen to people she has just met, rather than run away from them at full speed muttering, “I don’t speak English!”
What might happen if I flung open the doors of my life? Would it change for the better?
Although I had accepted who I was, at this juncture in my life, it was not making me happy. I had taken my introvert status as a license to wall myself off from others.
Although I savored my introvert world, part of me wondered what I might be missing out on. When you define something or someone, you inevitably limit it. Or her. The way I saw myself became a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Speeches? I don’t give speeches” or, “Parties? I don’t throw parties.” I accepted who I was, but I was also too scared to challenge my fears and go out and have the experiences that I craved.
During my bachelor’s degree in psychology, I took a neuroscience course, partly because I was so interested in the interplay between nature and nurture. But now that I was an adult, how much could I change as a result of new experiences?
The famous Shakespeare quote is “To thine own self be true.” Yes. But I didn’t want to be tethered to my insecurities and anxieties for eternity. I didn’t want to stay stunted. We’re humans—we have the capacity for growth and change.
And once I realized that, a small voice inside me said, “Screw this bullshit.” I’d been using the introvert label as an excuse to hide from the world.
Up until that point, I’d been clinging to my shintrovert status, and it had made it almost impossible for me to have those things I secretly yearned for: a career I cared about, new meaningful relationships, filled-with-laughter friendships, and experiences that I hadn’t planned out in excruciating detail.
I was an introvert in a hole, not in a hole because I was an introvert. There are plenty of happy introverts who are living their best lives, but I wanted to emerge from that hole—I believed a larger life than the one I currently had would ultimately make me happier.
But to do that? Something had to change.
Question: What would happen if a shy introvert lived like a gregarious extrovert for one year? If she knowingly and willingly put herself in perilous social situations that she’d normally avoid at all costs?
Would it offer up a world of life-changing experiences?
Or would she wind up in the woods, eating weeds and communing only with wolves until she died of malnutrition, alone but kind of happy that she never had to engage in small talk about Bitcoin ever again?
Here goes nothing.
* * *
1. For more on this, please see A Note on Introversion and Methodology.
one
The Sauna, a Story
or
Rock Bottom
I met my husband, an Englishman, in Beijing, where we fell in love the most probable way two shy people can: at work, flirting on instant messenger, two desks apart, never making eye contact. Sam and I both worked at the same magazine, and it was the first time I’d ever felt completely and totally at ease with someone who I was also attracted to. After eventually speaking to each other in person, we moved to Australia together and then eventually got married and moved to a tiny apartment in Islington, north London.
I’d spent nearly three years getting used to Beijing, a city where the locals always tell you what they think about you. The local teahouse owner? He thought I was too fat. My landlady? She thought I was too thin. My fruit seller? He thought I did not drink enough hot water. Actually, they all thought that.
People would also ask how much money I made as a magazine editor (not very much), or why I wore flimsy flip-flops in a big, dirty city (I was young and stupid), or why I was looking so haggard (have you seen Beijing’s pollution records lately?). But at least I always knew where I stood.
After that, I assumed it would be a breeze to assimilate in England, a country without a language barrier. Plus, I had a few old friends there, and I’d be there with Sam. After the chaos of my three years in China, I was in awe of London. All the green space! The orderly lines! The toilets with toilet seats! I stared at all the types of chocolate bars and potato chips in a big supermarket and felt pure euphoria. I wanted to walk around the city with open arms. I wanted London to love me the way that I loved it.
London did not love me.
Instead, London (well, a Londoner) stole my wallet and my visa and thus my right to work in the UK. If London was trying to punish me, it was doing it in a really passive-aggressive way, because not having my visa also meant that I couldn’t leave the country. It had imprisoned me, but it would not let me work.
And that was just the beginning. Compared to the US, English people’s words were so heavily weighted. A woman would thank me on the train for moving my bag, and I was almost certain that what she was really saying was “Damn straight you’re gonna move your bag for me.” A man would squeeze by me on the escalator, and the pitch of his “Excuse me . . . ?” wo
uld be loaded with hate and nearly reduce me to tears. People would ask me if I wanted to do something, and I had no idea whether it was an order, a helpful suggestion, or sarcasm. Others suffered the same way. “I genuinely don’t know whether my colleagues are making fun of me or being nice,” a former coworker from Chicago once confessed.
And friends? I’d struggle to make new friends in the easiest of places, never mind in London. People prefer to keep to themselves, especially in public. This was wonderful at first. No one ever approached me to chat. I was left alone. I once tripped and fell in a crowded street in broad daylight. I began the “I’m fine, I’m fine, honestly” protest. But no one had stopped. I lay on the ground, impressed. These people were better introverts than I was!
Because I couldn’t work without my UK visa, I spent my days partaking of Britain’s best cultural invention—TV marathons of Come Dine with Me, a reality TV show where various people host dinner parties for strangers. I was excited to learn that most British dinner parties end with a poached pear dessert and everyone secretly bad-mouthing the host while perched on the edge of her bed.
After a few months, I got my visa back and did the mature thing and got a job at a marketing agency writing blog posts for a shoe brand. My specialty was writing guides for what shoes to wear in what weather—the kind of decision most people have mastered by age seven.
Before I knew it, Sam and I had spent a few years in London. And during that time, all the friends I did have in London left. You may think that’s an exaggeration. It is not. Rachel, my best friend from college, moved to Paris. Ellie, a good friend from China, moved back to Beijing. English coworkers I bonded with scattered to the countryside or the suburbs. London became an increasingly lonely place. The streets had become familiar, but they were, as ever, filled with strangers. I buried myself at work, under blog posts and client meetings and shoes.
