LOW ON SOCIAL BATTERY

“Yeah. It’s okay,” she said, “He just doesn’t have a lot of social battery.”

That’s a nice way of thinking about it, I thought to myself. We all have different capacity when it comes to storing and using social energy, and so it’s quite possible that a person will need to just sit and recharge for a while, even if the rest of the party is in full swing. Some of us have small social batteries.

I smiled into my library book. In that world, William Tyndale was translating the New Testament into English, and Henry VIII (pre-reformation of course) was what some people might say was ‘disapproving’ of the idea. Some things are ahead of their time.

“I’d guess you’re in an introvert then Matt?” said someone else a little later. She was swilling something in a sparkly glass and twinkling along to the background jazz.

“It’s a good guess!” I joked.

To be honest, it was all a little awkward. She’d already asked me about our Christmas, and I’d basically said I had a low social battery and had been ‘peopled-out’. I said that. At a party - a situation that literally requires you to be the opposite of peopled-out. She was right. I’m basically an introvert, admitting that parties are designed for extroversion.

I get so awkward. It feels like I have to expend all my energy on aiming for witty, interesting or charming - which is exhausting all by itself. Plus, I feel as though I’m always perilously close to saying something super-weird or offensive, and navigating around that single-track mountain road is really difficult.

Someone else chipped in with a helpful thing at that point. They said it would be great if we could all wear badges with sliders, letting people know our social battery is at 10% or 50% or nearly full or whatever. Everyone laughed. I secretly thought it was genius.

Henry VIII changed his mind about the English Bible in the end. Too late for William Tyndale, but just in time to catch the sweeping reformation of Christianity in Europe. Not even the king can stop the tide, it turned out.

As it happens I don’t believe in fixed introverts or extroverts. I think we fluctuate in our lives and through our contexts, and it’s possible to show behaviours of both without being labelled as either - or, in other words, if you see me at a party, ask me about the sixteenth century and see if it might be a clue to helping me recharge my depleted social battery.