That courgette is making a run for your billable hour.

I thought I would

Be out mingling during weeknights

...with friends,

... at an event,

... with a partner (lol),

... without the thought of wanting to be braless on my sofa.

Instead, I’m at home most nights. Am I mad about it?

No.

Especially not in the winter. Especially not when I’m coughing up $18 for three quarters of a courgette that I’m well aware has the retail value of $1.29. Learning about your office politics isn’t worth an 18x markup. Not sorry.

I’ve had partners I’ve been out mingling with but either the partners or the mingling didn’t have staying power (it was both). My most recent partner and I pushed through the mingling as quickly as possible in an effort to go home and ignore one another, also as quickly as possible. So, mysteriously, fiction is trumping reality as there isn’t a happy precedent for the story in my head.

I think about going out far more than I actually do.

In some ways, I suppose I’m stress testing my preferences just to be sure they’re still firmly in the Yeah, maybe! while certainly meaning There’s no way camp when someone proposes a hangout that’s past my bedtime.

Though typically dependent on the time of year and my self-determined Feeling Good About Me scale, I’ve been revisiting and pushing back against my introversion narrative quite a bit lately - probably consciously and subconsciously - wondering if my current situation, solo mid late 30s, is a side effect of my behavior.

Maybe. Definitely, says some meme about not meeting the love of your life on your sofa.

Whatever.

As a behavioral scientist and Official Nerd, I know that we can get used to things that are good for us. Except for meditation, apparently.

Seriously though, perhaps my own stories about having firm introverted tendencies which I hug with delight should be knocked around a little. Maybe I can - and should - get used to being uncomfortable and resettle my preferences into a different mold. Like a lump of the most refined, sophisticated dough, settling a different, more crowd pleasing cookie cutter.

But I don’t.

I know I could just try, try to be out and about on Work Nights, which, in all honesty, have even less meaning to me than the usual bear since I’m self employed. I might even like it.

But it’s the might that I don’t like.

And it’s the comfort that I do.

I’d love to pretend that only now am I contemplating a seasonal hibernation, and that I lead a Normal New Yorker Social Life, as defined by me.

But that would be a lie. I’ve long been in pseudo hibernation. It’s my MO and very often, my happy place.

But maybe it’s time to poke my head out again.

Maybe the world has changed (lol, not that way).

Maybe I've changed.