Love Letters

Lately, in the mornings before going to work, I make the following resolutions and *try* to keep them.

~ Make small talk ~

~ Engage in conversations ~

Sometimes I manage to make a little conversation with the cab drivers I meet and during the earlier part of the day, I smile more and say good morning to the people I bump into, but as the day goes by, my usual self returns and I recede to my more stimulating inner world. It's such a bother to try to think of small talk topics for people you hardly know. Sometimes my mind is blank as a slate when I am forced to make conversations.

Being introverted has several downsides in an office environment. First of all, it shows and people keep reminding me that I am too quiet. Part of me knows it too and that I need to change that a little bit. It's hard to make new friends because small talk is hard to initiate and I lie in wait for tiny windows of opportunities to go make friends with seemingly interesting people. Quiet introverts can very easily be swept under the rug like dust bunnies and go unnoticed. Times like these, I am grateful to the few extroverted people who include me and make me feel welcome. Damn you, other introverts in the office. You guys are a very cold and un-engaging lot!!!

I found an interesting initiative. It's called More Love Letters. Each month they send an email with personal distress stories of about three people with first names only. Usually, people who are close to the distressed persons request More Love Letters to cheer their loved ones up and that's how they get picked as the ones to receive bundles of letters from anonymous strangers. None of their personal details like full names or home addresses are mentioned. What people like me who likes to write letters do is to write to these people (to just one person or all three) - something, anything that will cheer them up. It's all mailed to the organisers of the initiative who collect the letters and post the bundle to the distressed persons. I do not know if everyone likes reading letters or if it helps cheer them up from whatever they are passing through, but it has certainly engaged my interest. People in distress range from heart breaks, to cancer patients, to victims or abuse, to soldiers who fought in the war, to people passing rough patches in life, to those who have forgotten to laugh, to those who are lonely etc. Writing to random strangers anonymously feels good and daring to this blogger, who is not an adrenaline junkie.

Today, I finished my book on Last Chance to See. That was seriously an epic read mixed with funny and heart-wrenching realities of selected wildlife conservation stories around the world. I feel like I lost a dear friend who kept me company on my way to work all these days. Oh dear, what will I read in the bus tomorrow??

Go to sleep, Shu. It's past your bedtime.