I am asocial. Sometimes I am shy, by which I mean afraid of talking to people, but most of the time I am just asocial. I feel silly when I turn on IRC in the morning before seeing who's playing music in the kitchen (and that is not most of the time; I can go days without turning IRC on, really I can...) but not silly enough to turn it off and go out into the kitchen.

I don't think most of my friends realize how asocial I am, especially the ones who've only seen me at camp and parties. Since I was fifteen I've been rather rabidly social around campers, compensating for my complete lack of social life at home. Well, that's not true. I had friends, I just didn't ever try to hang out with them. Which brings me to my next point.

Hanging out with certain people and groups of people makes me happy. Hanging out with most people and most groups of people exhausts me. It doesn't matter whether I like them or not or even how much I enjoy the hanging out; it's exausting. Talking on the phone is almost always exausting, unless I'm already energized by something else. I suppose that might have something to do with having to create a person from something as ephemeral as their voice. Text is much easier.

IRC is not exhausting at all, ever, no matter who's on. I've certainly been in conversations where five people are spitting overwhelming and confusing questions at me all at once, but even that isn't draining. IRC is easier because I can read text several times over. If I'm distracted or need to close my eyes for a second or just feeling fuzzy, I can let each word sit individually and get it at whatever pace I'd like. IRC provides space for several one on one conversations to happen at once. Every once in a while I get frustrated with real life because it won't let me focus on two meaningful conversations at once. I can handle it; the space-time continuum is just stupid sometimes.

The energy I get out of really good real life conversations and hanging out makes good IRC conversations seem -- well, not bad or unimportant. Flat, perhaps. Real life conversations have much more possibility. I would never choose to interact solely online. But I'm realizing more and more how important it is to my sense of well-being. I like people. I'm a social person. But they exhaust me really easily.

I'd like to think about this more.