The great uniter

In the past few weeks, with the wedding of one of my close friends, the anniversaries of births, and other assorted familial obligations, I've been going to a lot of parties and meeting entirely too many new people. Now first of all, I'm going to point out that as an introvert this is far from optimal and is basically a form of torture I keep volunteering myself for. Second, once you get past the initial "oh hi, what's your name" thing the first question any stranger wants to ask you is "So what do you do?"

I used to hate answering "So what do you do." I used to be all, "I'm getting a PhD so I can be an over-educated waiter" or "I work at so and so company that does this incredibly boring thing that you couldn't care less about and is probably going to be responsible for the collapse of civilization (I'm looking at you health apps)".

But now? Now I love this question. "What do you do?" "Oh, I work on the iOS app for chess.com" "Oh dang, I play chess there, that's awesome." Happens more often than you think. People from all walks of life play (or at least have played) chess. It's a game almost everybody has some familiarity with. People love games - there's something fundamental in the human desire to spend our free time playing games, and chess is one of the oldest games around.

So yes, Meeting you at a party I'm still going to be crazy uncomfortable and thinking about how much I wish I were back in bed with a Switch, playing Zelda (Don't worry, I take frequent breaks to lose 1-3 minute games on chess.com). But hey, at least when you ask me what I do you'll see this big stupid grin on my face when I say "I've got the best job ever."