River: Fighting loneliness

[mdlbear]

A couple of days ago I posted a link to ysabetwordsmith's post on Loneliness and Fraying Social Fabric.

She has since followed it up with Fighting Loneliness, Part 2: Very Basic Steps and Fighting Loneliness, Part 3: Friendship Tips for Introverts. Wow! I'm finding these incredibly useful.

It's hard for an introvert like me to learn how to function around people, especially when they were raised by introverts like my parents (Dad was, certainly. I'm not sure about Mom). And especially when they're shy and have learned to avoid people. All of the role models the media present us with are extroverts. At least all of the really conspicuous ones. Because, well... extroverts.

It occurs to me that if social interaction is anything like a language (either programming or human), the only way to learn it is to get a lot of practice. Programming languages are easy for me -- computers are patient, and I can practice programming any time I like. They're not likely to get upset at me when I make stupid mistakes, and I'm not likely to get upset at myself. And there are lots of useful manuals to read, to help learn computer languages.

There's a lot to read about interacting with people, too, but it's difficult for a novice to tell what's useful. And of course most of it is written by and for extroverts.

More on that later, perhaps; it needs a longer post, and it's getting late.