I've begun to wonder about my solitary nature recently. Once, I was a very distinctly anti-social person, which was largely because I was a very poor study as to how exactly society worked. Or at least, I was a poor study at determining the particular social cues of my peers. Sometime around highschool, this began to change, and the social circles I was involved in began to be more affected by my involvement. Soon, I was aware that I was actually somewhat adept at being a social person; the proverbial butterfly. College was more of the same, even to the point where I was a BMOC. This was very much to my surprise at times - people would talk to me and be either intimidated by my speaking to them and/or would be surprised & frightened that I happened to know their name.

Now, however, I'm not nearly the gregarious one that I was. I work in a building with hundreds of other people, most of whom are roughly my age, yet I seem to have little conversational contact with anyone around me. In the few other social circles I'm apart of, I don't feel much need and/or don't make much effort to be more at the center of attention or more involved in the goings on than I would have in years past.

I suppose I wonder if I'm devolving to my base nature of introvert, or I've merely evolved past the time in my life when I was best suited to being gregarious & loquacious.

Regardless, I feel awkward now. . . like I don't have quite the level of awareness of everything I need to be a completely normal human being, but then, I'm aware of how weird I am, so I can't be that awkward. Aspiring to hermitude (hermitage? hermitness?) is the logical conclusion, but that does somewhat pose a problem for my wife & daughter.

Guess I better start learing to be a productive, healthy member of society, er sum'n.