During last year’s New York Comic Con, a friend and colleague told me that she wished she could be as outgoing as me. I was taken aback by the comment. I’ve always been an introvert. I have trouble approaching people in new situations. I’m often awkward socially. I have only a few close friends, and my relationship with most of them—including my wife and my best friend—started when the other person approached me. Unless I know you well or I am very drunk, I tend to be reserved and quiet. So, how was I able to be social enough for someone to call me outgoing at a con? The answer is complicated, and took me a while to figure out how to get myself to the point where I could function successfully in professional networking and business conversations. One of the key factors in my growth is the practice I call “Introvert Time.”
Introvert Night began a couple of years ago at New York Comic Con. After a long day in the middle of the four day con, I was supposed to go to the Creator After Con Networking event at a local bar. The event is one of the most important networking events each year for me, and I’ve met many artists, podcasters, and even a few friends at there over the years. The thing was, I was feeling really low energy after multiple days of pitching and reviewing portfolios at the con. I decided to take a couple of hours to myself and walk to a bar I knew which was about a mile away from the con for dinner. The bar was close enough that I could walk there in about 15 minutes, but far enough that I could be reasonably sure that I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew from the con.
Between the half an hour I spent walking there and back and the 45 or so minutes I was in the bar by myself eating dinner, I was able to recharge my social battery enough to have a productive night at the networking event.
Ever since, I’ve made sure to schedule introvert time into my con schedule. The amount of time varies depending on the con and the situation. This past weekend at the Nebula Convention, I took a full night to myself after the convention to recharge. I took a long walk around Pasadena, found a local brewery and a Taco truck, and made it through the night without talking to anyone except the servers at the above-mentioned business. Even though I missed some potential networking time at the hotel bar, I felt like the rest of the convention was more productive from a networking standpoint than it would have been if I didn’t take the time to recharge.
At the Nebula Convention, SFWA president Jeffe Kennedy spoke about social fatigue and how many of the writers at the convention were introverts. She asked participants not to be offended by awkward social interactions. There were a lot heads nodding during those comments. To paraphrase the Cheshire Cat, we’re all introverts here. We need to find ways to make ourselves comfortable with putting ourselves out there.
For me, that thing is dedicated alone time. My introvert time usually looks like walking around the city where the con is and finding a place where I can have a beer alone. Yours may look different. Perhaps it’s locking yourself in your hotel room for a few hours and reading. Perhaps it’s spending a day entirely in panels rather than Artists Alley. Whatever it is, I hope you find the thing that lets you recharge your own social battery AND schedule that time into your con so that you’re able to engage socially and professionally. You might be surprised at how your friends and colleagues view your behavior after you’ve instituted this practice.
I wish you the best of luck.
A. A. Rubin 