extroverted <\/li>\n<\/ol>\nGregarious? Outgoing? Anyone who knows me realizes that I can be very talkative once I get to know someone. The catch has always been that until I get to know them, I have historically been unable to talk at all. That has always made meeting people a challenge. What is different, I guess, is that lately I have been able to talk to strangers too. <\/span><\/p>\nWhy?<\/span><\/p>\nPractice. Seriously. For two months, every Tuesday I went to the growler store and forced myself to talk to whoever sat next to me and to the servers. Easy, right? They were serving beer. I like to talk about beer! I talked to married men about their wives. I talked to an 75 year old man about his career as a pilot and current job driving a wine tasting party bus. <\/span><\/p>\nIt was kind of hard, but fun. I suppose it was good for me. I was in training for the inevitable dating. <\/span><\/p>\nI suck<\/i> at dating. <\/span><\/p>\nOr maybe I don’t–after all, I am not introverted\/shy\/awkward now. I am charming and gregarious. <\/span><\/p>\nWho knew?<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the last month, I have had people say things after meeting me for the first time that sort of surprise me. In a good way. In a way that makes me think that all the trouble I’ve taken to try to be more engaged in life might actually be doing some good. The following … Continue reading What people tell me about myself<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7lr3R-2tb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9855,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=9855","url_meta":{"origin":9497,"position":0},"title":"Upcoming wordaversary","author":"Michelle","date":"April 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In just a few days, the blog will hit 300,000 words. Well over 715 posts in about 21 months.\u00a0 Most of the posts are mediocre at best. Going back to the first several months, back in the Summer of 2013, I can see how rough it was. I didn't know\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Words"","block_context":{"text":"Words","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7318,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=7318","url_meta":{"origin":9497,"position":1},"title":"How to tell if someone likes you…you know…that way…","author":"Michelle","date":"September 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The other night I was chatting with a newly single friend, and we touched on some of the difficulties of meeting people. His biggest problem is that women flock to him without any effort on his part. He hasn't ever really had to go after a woman. Hey. It's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Words"","block_context":{"text":"Words","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11334,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=11334","url_meta":{"origin":9497,"position":2},"title":"Art, slurs and euphemisms","author":"Michelle","date":"March 27, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"You scumbag, you maggot You cheap lousy faggot Happy Christmas your arse I pray God it's our last --the Pogues\/Fairytale of New York Being a person of the recently single variety, I logged into OKCupid a week or so ago to update my profile. I had totally forgotten that my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Random thoughts"","block_context":{"text":"Random thoughts","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=20"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5189,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=5189","url_meta":{"origin":9497,"position":3},"title":"Like funny ha-ha?","author":"Michelle","date":"April 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Isn't it strange? What? How people think I'm funny now. Peculiar? Is that bad? You're always making fun of \"normal people.\" No, not funny strange. Funny like a comedian. You *are* funny. You've always been funny. But nobody used to think so. Nobody? Only a few people. The ones I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Words"","block_context":{"text":"Words","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9172,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=9172","url_meta":{"origin":9497,"position":4},"title":"A brief pause in the flow of words","author":"Michelle","date":"January 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear blog, Please excuse Michelle for not writing any words tonight. She was spinning. Bike spinning, not yarn spinning. Then she was cooking bacon and mushrooms. Then she was talking. And maybe drinking adult beverages. And then they had to eat the bacon and mushrooms. And the avocado. There was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Words"","block_context":{"text":"Words","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michellejolin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/IMG_2470-0.jpg?fit=341%2C391&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7945,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=7945","url_meta":{"origin":9497,"position":5},"title":"Nothing comes from nothing","author":"Michelle","date":"October 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Nothing comes from nothing, Nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good. --Rodgers and Hammerstein\/Something Good There's this really annoying song that's been entrenched in my brain for several days. I don't know about most people, but to me that's a lot\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Words"","block_context":{"text":"Words","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}