I’m not very good at conversation.
More precisely, I’m not good at coming up with topics to talk about.
Work-related communication is fine. Practical conversations and day-to-day exchanges usually aren’t a problem either.
The real difficulty is with private relationships, like family and friends. I simply don’t have many things to talk about. Work is full of things I can’t easily share outside. As for hobbies, I mostly just play games at home or sleep. That is pretty much my routine every week.
So I end up with nothing to talk about.
Many people kindly tell me, “Just be yourself” or “Feel free.” I genuinely appreciate that, and I am thankful those relationships continue. At the same time, though, I think it also puts some burden on the other person. If I stay in the role of listener, it is almost like I am drawing topics out of them. And once they run out of things to say, the conversation simply ends there.
A little while ago, I wrote an article called How to Lower the Bar for Output . I still think that advice is useful when the medium is text and there is time to think. But conversation is different. It is sound-based and immediate, which makes it much harder.
There is no particular punchline here. The only countermeasure I can think of is to keep collecting small bits of information that might later turn into conversation topics.