A little too introverted?

I don't think I have an answer for this - not something inspiring for other people. This has just been an everyday moment for about the past two years.

I have never been a really outgoing person. The night Nate first asked me out, it was a Friday night. I was in high school. It was about 9 p.m. I was in my pajamas getting ready to go to bed.

I've always kind of been a homebody.

This has been the most difficult part of working in the journalism field. I don't naturally put myself out there to get to know people who could become potential sources. I don't enjoy making conversation with random people that I don't know.

I have struggled lately with trying to find story ideas with personal touches, because I haven't met too many people since I have moved. I have friends, enough for me. However, I don't seem to have enough friends for the newspaper business.

Nate is an outgoing person with lots of friends. After making close friends in college, I have taken on some of Nate's friends as my good friends. I'm not motivated to talk to people to find more friends - I have the best friends and all that I need.

In preschool, in elementary school, in junior high, in high school, in college - my friends were ready-made. They were the people I had classes with, the people I played sports with, the people I went to Sunday school with. Now, I don't have ready-made friends. I don't really know how to go about making these friends.

My college friends all seem to struggle with the same sentiments. We have our close-knit group of friends, but we don't seem to know how to meld into the communities we have moved into.

Growing up, I was also surrounded by people I had known my whole life. Now, I'm in a community where I don't know anyone, and no one knows me, but everyone else seems to know each other. Why should people want to know me when they have all the friends they need?

Moving to a place where no one knows you and being expected to make connections quickly has never been easy, or fun, for me. I honestly don't know how to go about it. I'm perfectly content with all the friends I have, but how to make contacts for work beyond that is a mystery to me.

I guess the longer I live here, the more people I will meet. The more I give out my business card, the more people will have my name. The more people who have my name, the more story ideas I will get.

Like I said, I don't have much inspiration in this topic, but maybe you also feel like me and can get comfort knowing that you're not the only one a little lost in a new transitional time in life.