Company outings. And cookies.

I just came back from my company outing. I have decided that there is one thing in which I am and probably always will be deficient... small talk. I can't do it. I just can't. I mean, what do I have to talk about with people I don't know? The weather comes to mind. Work, too. But once you move past the (really lame), "Wow, it's getting chilly, isn't it?", and the "Yeah, work has been really busy lately. New analysts, lots of new projects," what do you say? I can't even do small talk with my immediate coworkers, my fellow librarians, the people with whom I work day in day out. Is small talk something that you get better at with age? Or is small talk something that needs to be learned, practiced? Or, even worse, is it something that is genetic, and did I not get that gene? I know I over-think things. I know that I am very much aware that I am not good at small talk so in those situations when I should be using small talk I am too hung up on the fact that I'm not good at it, that I'm not doing a good job, that I'm sounding stupid, that I'm deficient, that I should just go crawl back under my rock and maybe someday will get the courage to come back out. I think that I just think that I am the most boring, uninteresting person in the world, that I don't ever do anything but work, that I have few hobbies anymore and only see my friends once a month or once every other month, if that, so it's not like I even have those, "so, the other night my friend and I went to the bar/movies/store..." stories that everyone seems to share, so what in the world could I possibly have to talk about? My mind doesn't turn off long enough to make small talk, or to be interesting. At these times I seem to be a prisoner of thinking.

Anyway, there's a company outing every other year where I work, and this is my second outing. Both were at golf courses, and both were set up in the same way - you could golf, or you could play softball, soccer, human checkers, get your caricature done, have your palm read, or play carnival games like bean bag toss, basketball throw, smash the big hammer thing, etc. The problem with this outing is that no one seems to go. A firm of about 600 people globally gets about 100 people total to come to the event. I wish we would do something fun, like have a company-wide outing to the movies or something. Or a company-wide talent show, so you could get to see what these people do besides work. I'd even take a ropes course, or some kind of lame team building exercise. The whole sports/carnival thing isn't for me, and it doesn't seem to be for anyone else. Cocktails and dinner are better attended, but still, this seems to be an event more for shared resources than for the whole company, so it seems like a waste of time. I do have to remind myself, though, that if I weren't at the outing I'd be at work, and that after one of these company events I always have another jacket or sweatshirt to add to my wardrobe. This year it's some kind of water and wind-proof fleece-lined jacket (with the company name embroidered on the arm, of course).

I don't know, even after a couple of glasses of wine and a whole bunch of cookies post-outing, I still can't get the dissatisfied taste out of my mouth. Blech! And now I just feel sick.