Marius is someone I followed back when he was focused on his reviews, especially of photography gear. He’s back to writing again.

Marius has a very resonant post today about introversion. He highlights a book by Jess Pan: Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes

Not coincidentally, a couple of months before this new blog idea took root in my mind, I finished reading a fantastic book by Jess Pan. It’s about an introvert’s year of living as an extrovert.

“Nobody waves—but everybody waves back” | Marius Masalar

It’s chockfull of interesting quotes but this one particularly rang true:

People change. On that day in New York, Teddy didn’t see me as who I am now. Or, at least, who I felt I had become. Being seen is something we crave out of friendship—that feeling of “This person gets me more than I get myself.” When we lose that with old friends, the magic is gone.

“Nobody waves—but everybody waves back” | Marius Masalar

The power of strong friends come from them always seeing you for who you are and championing the best version of that. Of course, who you show to your friends and how authentic is that to your real self is a particularly thorny problem for me as I’m incredibly guarded and usually have different personalities with different groups of people.

When different friend groups come together, I find the situation awkward for me as one friend group may not recognize the me in another friend group.

This is complex as in some cases the change is driven by genuine personal growth and in some cases it’s caused by my choice of a persona and in some cases, the friend doesn’t want to let go of an image of me.

Just know that thinking about all of this is a new muscle I am building myself and it’s a complex unbundling of really thorny issues – sometimes behavior learned right from childhood. I don’t have all the answers and might never will. But, for the first time in my life – I am enjoying the process.

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