On Socializing

Excuse me while I suddenly post. (Don't get any sudden ideas that this means I won't then vanish from LJ for months, though.)

This is the post that I thought of while considering how I haven't posted for a while because I haven't had anything to say. (It was going to be the "extra bonus post", but since I haven't actually finished writing any of the others . . . They might happen eventually. Or not.)

Sometimes I see people gushing about how the internet is wonderful for shy/quiet/introverted people because they don't have to respond instantly/shout over people/deal with actual people. And . . . I do not have this experience.

In fact, I'd almost say I have the opposite. I lurk. I read the discussion, I don't say anything, because most of the time I have nothing to say. And if I come up with a brilliant idea, something to contribute . . . generally I don't add it, because I feel uncomfortable jumping into the middle of someone else's conversation when they don't even know I've been listening.

In a real-life conversation, the other participants know I'm there, even if I haven't said anything yet. I still get to be a participant.

On the internet, I kind of always feel like I'm eavesdropping.

A story-thing

Continuing from the last post, the other option is that I get in a fight with technology and don't manage to post at all. The following is a tiny piece of fiction that I wanted to enter in a contest on a blog the other weekend, and I never managed to get through the captcha. So you guys can read it instead.
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We paused by a pawnshop, penniless. He fingered his wedding band.

Surprise. "You'd risk --?"

"I would destroy it, if it would only --" He couldn't continue.

"You're not Frodo, buddy. This isn't some sequel to Lord of the Rings."

He opened the door, came back barehanded, some few dollars richer.

Three buildings back, a psychic -- a medium, draped in choice silks from the local Goodwill. Her allegiance: to cash, and to no other truth. He paid her. "Whom shall I summon?"

I let him answer.

"My wife. Dead two weeks."