Dating Diary Of A Wannabe 'Extrovert'

You know you have zero work-life balance when your dating story begins at an edit meeting. No, I was not dating my boss the only guy in our seven-member editorial team at the time.

- Ananya Ghosh

Tinder was still a new phenomenon, and he was insistent that we, especially those who write on pop culture and trends, should try out all kinds of new apps to keep up with the goings on. We got a dressing down for being snobs. 'Online dating is real, and I want stories on it. Get on to the apps and stop being a prude,' was the sermon. Half an hour later, I was on Tinder. And it was Alice falling down the rabbit hole and getting bombarded with exquisite online dating terms like, Ghosting, Catfishing, Cookie Jarring, etc., along the way. Tinder became my favourite place to learn new words. This was about eight years back. I have moved out of Tinder and to the greener pastures of Bumble and Hinge. And from being a word collector, dating apps have become a way to occasionally nudge my lazy introverted self out of its shell and sample the real world and its people.

But being an introvert, people drain me. For me, it is exhausting to meet new people and doubly so, to keep in touch. I hate social gatherings and parties and small talk. But it is the extrovert's world where 'introvert burnout' is just a myth. And eventually, you get tagged as an outcast. So, when I made my New Year's resolution to meet four new people outside work, the following year, it sounded pretty hilarious on paper. For me, however, it was almost an unachievable goal. The easiest way, or so I thought, was to find people on dating apps. But incessant chatting with random strangers isn't easy. So, the idea was to meet the match for a coffee date pronto, without letting my inner self overthink the situation and abort mission.