forgive me Dunbar for i've been a glutton

as I hit a "friend count ceiling", I'm wondering who I'll become next

What’s a girl to do in New York when there’s endless people to meet, endless friends to learn with, endless sights to see? I’m maxing out now on the energy to keep connecting, to keep marathoning. I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and now I’m trying to find a new version of being that’s natural.

Rather than forcing introversion, I’m feeling my speed slow down. I’m craving more cocoon cozy feelings. What will they look like?

I’ve reflected on this inevitability lately as I’ve accrued more and more friends, mostly to cope with the giant blows my personal life has suffered with career and love lately. This year has been the year where I’ve deepened my relationship to my extroversion, fully accepting it as not an inferior way to be (compared to my internal idealization of the archetype of submissive Asian femininity), but a very real and beneficial way that I must learn to work with. But now, as I accept extroversion, introversion no longer feels like a destination I can’t reach, but a new exciting place to consider resting in.

Making friends has felt almost like sales to me (being self-employed for a few years, pitching myself also has become quite familiar) for years. What am I selling? Not myself, to be honest. I exist as a vessel for a larger idea of what the life we’re sharing in this moment — even briefly — is. I’m not selling an image of myself, or my entire guts and inner world. Rather, I’m selling the experience of being alive together, of talking and implicitly signaling an idea of yeah, me too.

When I connect with others, I deep dive immediately. It usually goes something like this — I comment on the meta-context I’m sharing with the other person as a form of bonding, usually something among the lines of 1. That we’re in the city of New York, and something has brought us here 2. That we’re young and around the same age, and have some sort of struggle we’re facing because of the times we live in 3. That something brought us to the specific place we’re in at this time, whether it’s the grocery store, the subway stop, the party 4. The fact that I just felt like talking to you of all people.

I always start it off by casually talking about myself, tossing out a fact, rattling my tail to see if others catch my drift or rattle back. I’m talking, but I’m watching you. I’m paying attention, I’m subconsciously analyzing you. I studied psychology not so I could influence other people, but so I could let them influence me. What they say back tells me a lot about them — as if I’m testing them, in my autistic way, to figure out who they are. I’m listening for the response, because I talk about myself in such a way that it’s the most base level facts about me that pique curiosity and could make someone go, “what is my relationship to the fact you’re presenting?” It’s like when provocateurs try to rile you up into a debate about ethics or politics, so they can get insight into how you think. I want insight into how people feel, so I offer up my purpose, my curiosity, my hope, my eagerness, in whatever form it’s supposed to take. It’s much more like improvisation than one would realize.

What I’m doing while I’m talking, is I’m listening to the energy. The energy of what exists between us, and implicitly it starts to feel like I'm open about me because from that I can also see how I’m closed. I’m okay with being closed. I’m okay with others judging me, I’m okay with others accepting me. When I talk, I see other people for some reason. I also see who I am. The goal isn’t to make people hear me, but for me to hear them. For me to test the waters but to bear witness to what the moment must present.

As an extrovert, I hate being on social media. I want to be out there in the world. Social media is a conversation starter, not a substitute for meeting. It’s to fill in the gaps with topics and ideas in between.

I hate scrolling. I don’t seek to be seen or impress others. I am always on my phone DMing other people, but when I’m with my friends I’m completely present and glued on them. We are immersed in conversation, we are excited about each other, and this is with every person I know. Every time, we extrospecting together, not waving at each other from the separate worlds we occupy. We are visiting inside each other, for a brief moment of time, to see what the interaction will yield. What will unfold is beyond me. I’ve never been at a loss for words when I’m with others.

I’ve never been insecure that my breadths of connection lack depth. My Dunbar number has always been quite high, higher than most other extroverts’, yet I go to bed thoroughly happy with the quality of the connections I’ve made. When I’m flitting from hangout to hangout, most of the conversations I’m leaving are deep and meaningful. Most people I know and like have shared “real” things with me right away, and I apparently have a gift for putting people at ease. I can safely say that I have yet to walk into a social situation in recent years and feel like it was a true waste of a time.

I’m coming up close to one year survived in New York, and the one thing that feels cohesive is how it’s helped me blossom into the person I always wanted to be because of the unfettered access to others I’ve never had before. Especially as I’ve leaned heavily on a support system I never had known prior to being here, I have gained confidence and realized so much. I’ve deepened friendships with my ride or die bffs, but also found myself at social outings almost every day of the week, where usually I walk away with someone’s Instagram, Twitter, phone number, or insights into how people work. Through this, I’ve solidified a few freelance opportunities too — but more importantly, I’ve gotten more and more insight into others, and my psyche and how I work.

This has brought me face to face with what I am seeking when I go out into the world, crusading to feel as many people’s presence daily as I strut the streets of Manhattan, ride the subway in meditation basking in sync with the people who are living their lives parallel to me, responding left and right to invitations to meet without batting an eyelash.

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All this to say though — I don’t think I’m satisfied with how I’ve been, because now my priorities have shifted from proving to my inner child/teen that I can have the friends I yearned for when I was young. I want goals that make me feel good on principle of completing them, not ones that added to my vast knowledge base or experience quotient. What are those?

I’ve thought about getting into comedy because I like making myself laugh. I’ve considered taking up biking because I want to feel infinite physically as I ride my way around the city. I’ve decided to try playing chess so I can find new ways to interact with others that aren’t about talking. I never had a party phase, so what will I occupy my time with when I’m not writing, philosophizing, reflecting, chatting, smiling?

I’m starting to feel overwhelmed at how my life revolves around connection, which has given me the reflection I needed to make it to the next level. But I need implicit payoffs too. Hobbies that are enjoyable can help ground me, especially I’ve pondered the possibility of what I am avoiding if I go too deeply into the world around me. My inner world has developed and healed as a result of me refining my experiences in the outside, but as my Dunbar limits start to shudder, I can surely say something needs to change.

I’m not burned out per se — just curious about a new version of me that doesn’t rely on leaving my house and finding my purpose while I’m out. Who’s the new person going to be then? I’m no longer interested in venturing so deep into others that, even if I have never ended up drowning, perhaps it is now that I’m honestly just bored.

I’m thankful for others being there — even when they are wordless — and surrounding me, reminding me I am not alone. That I am living a human life that is witnessed and related to. I’ve started realizing that I have seemingly limitless space for this fact because I am so starved of believing in this. But what happens when I finally have eaten enough to where I feel satisfied?

What happens when I embrace that the world out there has always wanted me, and truly would give me space to belong if only I ask for it? Will I then need to talk to as many people? If I savored how much others valued me? Would I binge upon the sunlight and the sounds of a crowd with somewhere to go if I believed I have a place?

Looks like that’s going to shift soon.