useful, and also maybe not about me

Nadia gave me this after a leaving do where I said, out loud, that I would rather do a double than go to another leaving do. she meant it kindly. it took me about three weeks, mostly on the bus.

the bit I keep coming back to is the research on being able to be sociable for a stretch if you know theres a quiet stretch coming after it. that is my entire working life and I had never had a name for it. I am chatty on shift. I hold hands, I take the mick out of the man in bay three about his football team, I sit with families at four in the morning. and then I get in the car and I dont put music on for twenty five minutes and if anybody rings me in that window I will not answer. I always thought that was rude of me. apparently its just how the battery works.

what didnt land. underneath it is a very corporate book. so much of it is open plan offices and brainstorming and how to get your quiet colleague to speak up in meetings, and I dont have meetings, I have a handover, and if I don't speak up somebody gets the wrong dose. the parenting section is genuinely good, especially the bit about not shoving a shy child into the middle of a party. the professional section is written for people with desks.

I also think she stretches. some of the studies felt thin to me and this is coming from somebody who is not remotely qualified to judge, its just that when you have read enough of these you start to spot when a whole chapter is one experiment from 1997 in a nice coat. the business school chapter is where I started skimming properly.

and there is a thing that bugged me all the way through. introvert and shy are not the same thing, and she says so, clearly, early on, and then lets them blur together anyway for the rest of the book. I am not shy. I can talk to anybody, I do it professionally forty odd hours a week. I just need a room with nobody in it afterwards.

the audiobook is fine, Kathe Mazur reads it, steady, no drama, good for a walk. I ended up buying the paper one as well because I needed to underline things and read them at my sister, who is the loudest person alive and who has never once understood why I go quiet at family things.

7 because the first third is properly useful and the back end of it is a business book wearing a psychology jacket. would still hand it to the right person, mostly to the person who thinks their quiet friend is unhappy. we are not unhappy. we are just finished for the day