Holiday Newsletter, continued

[edelsont]

Okay, here's the long-promised continuation of my so-called "holiday newsletter."  First, a follow-up note to the first section, "computer programming," of the previous post: I finished several improvements to the Clojure code which calculates my income taxes, and got my federal and North Carolina returns filed.

What I promised for the continuation was some information about social interaction.

Background: I lead a pretty solitary life.  Not a surprise: computer programming and writing are both mostly solitary activities, and I spend so much time on them, by choice, that there's relatively little left for real-time interaction with other humans.

Too little, in fact.  And I am making that judgment, not on the basis of any general belief about how people "ought" to live, but on observation of myself.  Sometimes I "go with the flow" for an extended period while programming and/or writing, and end up in a tense state, all tied up in knots.

It took me a long time to realize that I was (often) getting tense because I had been solitary for too long.  But eventually I noticed something: not infrequently, if something led me to take "time out" from my "work," and spend an hour or two chatting informally with someone, I felt better—specifically, less tense—afterwards.  In fact, it finally sunk in, that would often enable me to go back to "work" more cheerfully … and do better at it.

Once I became conscious of this, I did something about it.  Actually, I became more consistent in something I was already doing … without consciously realizing why.  Since I saw that I didn't spontaneously devote enough time to social interaction, I started planning it.

This has evolved to the point where, currently, there are three people with whom I have scheduled weekly conversations.  The nature of the conversations is not so very different from ones that might occur without prearrangement.  But when two people agree in advance to talk at a particular time, then it happens more often.  For me, and these three friends, at least.

I am very grateful to these people.  With their help, I like to say, I have managed to turn myself from a "ridiculously extreme introvert" into a [merely] "extreme introvert."

There's room for improvement.  Not necessarily more of the same modality, though I don't rule that out.  I've been thinking about my use of Internet "social media" (such as Dreamwidth itself).

There are some limitations, pretty much built in, as to how personally meaningful—how deep, if you will—such interactions tend to be.  But perhaps, if folks figure out how, those limitations can be largely overcome.  I hope to say more about this, soon, in another journal entry.