I’m an introvert and I like going to work to do my job and go home. I don’t understand people who use a job as a substitute for friendship or marriage. It’s a means to an end.
The sooner I do my duties, the longer my downtime is going to be, and I love having my downtime.
Many of my colleagues see me and immediately start asking questions I don’t want to answer, but neither do I want to hurt their feelings, I mostly want to be left alone. In the past this has been deconstructed as arrogance and people with fragile egos feel insulted by my indifference to them and that I prefer to work than to talk to them.
The world is made by extroverts. I have observed that people are eager to help you if you give them attention. I don’t get it, but neither I’m not going to change how extroverts think or feel.
If I give them the attention they need for as long as they need it I’m going to end up with daily headaches and neither my job nor theirs is going to be done.
I want to appear approachable, but keeping the info I feed them to a minimum. How do I do that?
What do you talk about to your coworkers?
What do you say to stop conversation organically? (meaning they don’t get offended).
I love my job. I am extremely passionate about my field of work and absolutely do things in the same field in my free time. I know many people who truly do what they love and love what they do. Maybe we’re just plain lucky or maybe we were about to make our passions profitable.
And that’s the key. Not all passions are profitable. If people only did jobs to make money and hated it the entire time we’d have 0 teachers here in the US since we don’t pay them for shit. But we have teacher who love their job and are fine making less money because the joy of teaching kids makes up for it. It’s a balance of enjoyment and money. Unless you’re lucky and just really like something that pays a fuck ton.