Extreme Introvert

The crystal entrance of the banquet hall was fogged by a pattern of handprints arranged in a sort of herringbone. Above the doors, an archin...

I never write about characters in isolation. And I can't think about a novel that is about a character in isolation. It would be a very ...

Farley goes quiet. I let the silence build until it fills every corner of the room. It leaks into his ears and his chest and his bladder and...

Soon he essentially stopped talking. "I am retreating into silence as a defensive mode," he mentioned. Eventually, he was down to ...

... it was not unusual for us to go days without finding anything to say to each other. The vast emotional distances between the individua...

After Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google closed their offices in Seattle, I asked my boss, "Are we the last holdouts?" This w...

I never respond to invitations. It just smacks of desperation. The only event I am certain to attend is my funeral, and I hope to arrive ver...

There were turtles every morning, tumbling in the surf as it crashed against the reefs. Floating above and beside them, we were all slav...

Like the uncertainty principle, the Drake Equation has had a layer of interpretation laid over it that obscures what it really says. In shor...

I was stalling. I would have to interact with humans as an augmented human... I had imagined it as taking place from a distance, or in the s...

Not one of you was normal, I said, and I watched him push his plate of half-eaten food towards me as though he were a child in a tantrum. Ye...

Any trouble under the sun can be overcome by silence. Excerpt from The Holy Man by Susan Trott  

I was a teenager, and I was working the night shift at a psychiatric hospital. All of the patients were tucked away in their rooms, and I w...

We ate the rest of it in silence, enjoying the feeling of the cold morning air and hot food in our bellies. That's one of the things I...

... there are so many issues at play in Hunchback that continue to be relevant today... the ridicule and torment in all its forms of those ...

After all these years, I've finally obtained the domain, extremeintrovert.com . It was once owned by someone else, but I recently saw t...

Lately I've been wondering if I've grown too old to care how many times a day people make note of my quietness (among other such thi...

Being at a startup, I get a small-but-not-insignificant chance to influence how things develop, and a chance like that cropped up recently a...

"What are you, antisocial?" someone will ask. "I'm not antisocial ," I'll say. "I'm just unsocial ....

A few months ago, I left my relatively new job and accepted an offer at a startup. Returning to another startup after so many years seems a...

I recently learned that I'm losing hearing in one of my ears. This has presented me with a new challenge and a new perspective. Now I...

It's the end of a work day and I'm crammed into a small conference room with other colleagues. The room is dubbed the "War Roo...

Sitting around a conference table, I typed away at my laptop while others chatted. I tuned in when they began discussing one of my projects...

Two coworkers were chatting about their motorcycles, and after some time one of them turned the conversation towards me. "We should ge...

I was hard at work and trying to ignore the chaos surrounding me, but at some point my mind registered that someone had been speaking to me ...

There is a group of six or seven people gathered just a little way behind me who have aroused my curiosity a little. I naturally assumed at ...

There are ways of making your presence known that some would consider uncouth and even shocking. There are ways of announcing yourself that...

Not many weeks ago, I told a colleague that I'd prefer him to use my full and correct name, and -- in case he couldn't handle that -...

During a meeting with my fellow co-workers, our new product manager went around the table asking us about our existing tasks and projects. W...

On the way out of the office this afternoon, knowing that my coworker would be hosting a New Year's Eve party, I said to him: "Enjo...