Beastocity: - 5
I highly value social situations that are not awkward. If I have a conversation with someone that is not awkward, I feel deeply loved and served by that person. Growing up I saw how my mom would smooth over strange social situations – be it a blunder of a close friend or family member or sitting next to someone at the airport – she would always have something funny and friendly to say to just put everybody at ease. So I grew up and went off to college with the same value and loved meeting new people and helping them feel at ease and making potentially awkward situations as least awkward as possible.
Maybe I’ve become too hypersensitive but I think I’ve been starting to regress in my smooth social skills. Recently I’ve been having a lot of awkward social interactions with people, usually at work. And it really bothers me. Usually after each one I’m internally reprimanding myself for my own awkwardness. Usually it goes something like this “One: why am I so awkward? Two: why am I so awkward? Three: why am I so awkward? …” and so on (no joke about the numbering, I think that is my internal J-ness coming out).
Here are my least favorite that I’ve been stumbling upon:
The hallway stare: What to do when you’re walking down a long hallway and you actually make eye contact before you’re within speaking distance? Look away and then look back and say hi or something? Smile and keep staring at the other person until you can say hi? Yuck!
The mumble fumble: What to do when you’re talking with someone and they mumble something you can’t quite understand but you either laugh or say something like “yeah” anyway. Then there’s that awkward silence where you’re like wow. I guess now’s the time where I could have responded to whatever that last thing that they said was, if only I knew what it was that they said last…. Yikes!
And many, many more… I think I’m finding that the more I try to be a social tinkerbell and try and cover everything with pixie dust the more I’m just appearing awkward and nervous. Crap. What to do? Embrace awkward conversations? Laugh at yourself? Blame it all on the other person?
Suggestions, anyone?
When I make eye-contact too far in advance I give a half-smile to acknowledge the person, then look straight ahead until we're in speaking distance. They shouldn't expect me to yell at them.
ReplyDeleteIf all else fails and you're in an awkward situation, say out loud, "Hmm, how could I make this more awkward?"