Today I went to a picnic today that had over 200 people at it. 200 people. That is a lot of people. I mean a lot. 200 people for me is a dizzying amount of people. Trying to interact and learn 200 people names, hobbies, and interest makes it a severe problem.
As usual, I went to up to people and just said "Hi," "How are you doing," or "What is going in your life?" I wanted to keep conversation superficial at best, so I can avoid trying to steer conservation with a person who also has to cope with 200 people.
The other person feels just overwhelmed as I do, but they have probably do have coping mechanisms which allow them to process two hundred people and prioritize which people to speak with at the event. I just become overwhelmed with the number of people, and as time passed, my ability to cognitively handle the conversation declined.
The superficial conversation helped me cope with my poor ability to learn how to capture people's attention with stimulating conversation and also the ability to draw their attention away from the potential of having a conservation with one of the other two hundred people there.
Learning that takes a considerable amount of skill and challenge. It would mean that I am willing to exert myself to best of my ability to achieve the meaningful moment with somebody that I do not know. As a person who has mild autism, I shy away from that. The more natural path is to accept my limitations and go to the event.
I know there are people out there who you want to exert yourself to the limits socially. They want to become a master extrovert. But for me, this is not the crowd to become the master extrovert especially with the number of people to deal with and the audience that I am dealing with at the event. I find that meaningful conservations come best in a smaller crowd and with people with like minds and intellects. I need to stop to think that I need to be some great extrovert because I am not.