At work or in real life encounters I am usually the extrovert type of person: Feeling good around people, always up to tell a story in a conversation and feeling really recharged and exhilarated afterwards. However, when running solo in conventions or big crowd events all I want to do is go and hide in some corner switching to full on introvert mode.
I always watched those people who get into a convention and make 20 friends an hour and it looked like something that it’ll be really hard for me to pull off.
Last weekend I was attending the LCS finals in St. Louis, a 10,000 people league of legends event. As expected, I was sitting by myself getting ready for a solo experience when this college age guy sat next to me with some of his friends and instead of giving me the nod, we looked at me and said four words:
Hi, what’s your name?
My evening then transformed from me hiding in the crowd to a us talking, laughing and connecting in my usual extrovert manner.
Makes me wonder how many opportunities for communication I missed over not just going and just talking to people.