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  I've known that I am an introvert from the first time I heard the meaning of the word.  Not to be confused with shyness or timidity, my introversion is more about conserving energy and being able to prevent myself from going into a state of sensory overload or overwhelm. Being in noisy and crowded spaces has always been a challenge. I talked about this quite a bit in my podcast, Your Own Best Company.  Upon hearing these things, some friends of mine suggested that  I might qualify as a Highly Sensitive Person in addition to being an introvert. They referred me to the book  The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You  by Elaine N. Aron. I had heard the term HSP in self-help circles but had never looked into it in  any detail.  There were definitely some parallels in the book that related to my experience: Gravitating to uncrowded spaces where solitude could be found. Finding ways to regulate the stimulation in my envi...

  It's been easy to talk about the worst parts of the tech explosion, artificial intelligence, and social media experience. It's noisy, confusing, often unpleasant, and complicated. It's not easy to navigate. Algorithms think they know what you want, but they keep showing you stuff that you wouldn't choose for yourself if you had time to decide anything.  I was on YouTube this morning, looking at the hundreds of videos that were being promoted on my feed. The thumbnails all look the same so as to seem generic. While the once popular promise that the internet and social media were going to offer endless possibilities to be uniquely yourself, the movement seems to be more toward homogeneity. I don't have a lot of time to watch, but I need a better way to choose than endless scrolling and filtering. I've grown more weary of the online world, and I often wonder how useful it really is. There was a gracefulness about the card catalog at the library that made the expe...

  My experience on YouTube has been a cool adventure for the most part. In the midst of spam comments, thumbnails and titles that are intended to coerce, and the noise you sift through to find what you want, miracles can happen. One of those miracles took the form of meeting Matthew Gray of the 50 Tastes of Gray Podcast.  A few years ago, I made a ten-minute video with no advance planning or intention that has become the most popular video on my page. It's about making a graphic overlay for Zoom interviews. That accidental success was the first point of contact.  In the past couple of years, Matthew has reached out to touch base and see how I've been doing. Most YouTube-inspired exchanges are not this thoughtful, but in one of his latest check-ins, he asked if I'd join him on his podcast. I'd made an assumption that the podcast was mostly about food, but that was before I'd properly listened to a few episodes. Matthew just loves good conversations, and he's a ma...