Friday Chatter: Meeting People
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
Well, this Friday Chatter is going up a day early because on Friday I’ll be on a train to Ottawa for Can*Con 2023! If any of you are in the area, feel free to say hi!
(ETA: Wait, it’s Wednesday, actually. So, two days early. Well, never mind.)
Autistic people are so famously terrible at networking. My own biggest problems are (a) sensory overload in crowded places and (b) not knowing how to initiate conversations. Not every autistic person will have those specific troubles, but we all have a few. Over the past year, I’ve gone to a couple of industry events and been pleasantly surprised that I was better at talking to people than I remembered being. I genuinely think this is because of therapy. But it’s still a low bar, and I’ve still found myself not knowing how to follow up afterwards.
I’m not really asking for advice here, but rather, I’m curious about all of your experiences, even if they differ from mine. What’s the one weird trick that helps you, in your particular circumstances, make connections with people? What’s one difficulty you’re still figuring out how to tackle?