Crossing Over
I touched on this back in November, but the topic warrants another look.
How many times, during an average day, do you come across someone new? Better yet, how many times do you pass a familiar face that you’ve never bothered to strike up a conversation with? Colin Wright calls it civil inattention, and I call it the Public Dilemma – the ability of an incredibly social species to go about their daily routine without exchanging anything more than a smile.
That grin is the first step, sure. But your lips have another purpose beyond unfurling the pearly whites: talking. Italicized because it’s patently obvious, and italicized too because most of us do a poor job of employing it. No coincidence, then, that we can operate in a group setting for months at a time without actually meeting the group.
I had a light bulb moment the other day, though, when I realized that our – or at least my – public shyness reaches far beyond the real world. Those hours I spend glued to my screen count too, right? So what am I doing on the internet, given how many minutes I devote to it?
Well, I read things. Lots of things.
But it’s not enough. That was a startling realization, in the whole “how did I not see this before?” kind of way. I interact with peoples’ websites, their personal environments imprinted onto the web, but not with the people behind them. Basically? I still don’t talk to people. But forming these connections over the internet is hands-down the easiest way to network yourself, especially in such a recklessly global medium.
For anyone trying to do anything, you’ve got to talk to people. Part of that happens on the street, in the form of meet and greets of every social stripe, but it also includes the internet, whether you email a blog owner or at least comment on their articles. Social media steps in nicely, and there’s a pretty obvious reason why we can target specific tweets over in Twitter: you must talk to people. That’s a lesson slowly-learned, in my case, but one easy to fix.
I’ve been making strides in building relationships well beyond the computer, but it shouldn’t stop there. My blog – and my career, honestly – might live or die on my ability to make a sizable splash on the internet, but I can’t get anywhere if I’m not throwing stones out onto the water. And, you know, inviting all my internet friends to the lake.
I’ve also got to work on my metaphors.