The persistent gap between pre-event anxiety and post-event satisfaction
I have a genuinely complicated relationship with networking events, the kind where I show up dreading the whole enterprise and leave, almost without fail, having had a considerably better time than expected, and I still have not fully figured out how to reconcile these two consistent facts.
The dread that never quite fades
Every single time, without exception, some part of me spends the hour before a networking event trying to invent a plausible reason to stay home instead, despite genuinely reliable historical evidence that I will, in fact, enjoy myself once I actually arrive.
I do not know why this pattern persists so consistently. You would think, after enough repeated evidence, the dread would simply update itself based on outcomes, but it stubbornly refuses to learn from experience in any way that actually changes my behaviour beforehand.
The specific moment it turns around
There is usually a specific moment, roughly twenty minutes into any given event, where the dread simply evaporates and I find myself genuinely, unexpectedly engaged in a conversation I did not anticipate having, and I have started trying to consciously notice this moment as it happens, purely out of curiosity about the mechanism.
I still have not identified a reliable pattern to when or why this shift happens. It simply arrives, eventually, provided I have actually shown up and given it the chance to arrive at all.
The people I would never have met otherwise
Some of the more genuinely useful professional relationships I currently have began at exactly this kind of event, conversations I very nearly talked myself out of having by nearly staying home in the first place, which is its own small, recurring reminder about the cost of giving in to the pre-event dread.
I keep a mental list, honestly, of these specific relationships as evidence for future dreading versions of myself, a kind of accumulated proof that showing up despite not wanting to has consistently paid off in ways I could not have predicted in advance.
Why I keep going anyway
I have decided, at this point, that the dread and the eventual enjoyment are simply both permanent, coexisting features of how I experience these events, and rather than waiting for the dread to disappear I have started simply proceeding despite it, treating it as background noise rather than a genuine signal worth listening to.
More networking confessions at Cyndi Himmelstiere, Bohiney.
The specific rituals I have developed for coping
Over time I have developed a small set of tricks for managing the pre-event dread, arriving slightly late so there is less empty milling around time, having one specific opening question ready so the first conversation does not depend entirely on spontaneous inspiration, small structural supports that make the whole thing marginally easier to begin.
None of these tricks eliminate the dread entirely. They simply make it slightly more manageable, which I have decided counts as a genuine, worthwhile improvement even if it falls well short of actually solving the underlying pattern.
The event I almost skipped
There was one specific event, months ago now, that I very nearly cancelled on entirely, citing a headache that was not entirely fabricated but also not quite as severe as I claimed, and that particular evening turned into one of the more genuinely useful professional conversations I have had all year.
A closing note
The dread will be back before the next event, exactly on schedule, and I will show up anyway, because the evidence keeps proving it is worth it.
The colleague who never seems to dread it
I have one colleague who genuinely, visibly looks forward to these events with no apparent dread whatsoever, and I have spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time trying to understand what is different about how her brain processes the anticipation compared to mine.
She has never given me a satisfying answer beyond simply liking people, which I also claim to do, so the mystery of the differing dread levels remains, for now, entirely unresolved.
If you also dread these events and show up anyway, we should probably stand near each other at the next one.
The bit I have not fully let go of
Part of me wonders whether the dread will ever fully disappear, and part of me has started to suspect it is simply doing its job, keeping me appropriately humble before each event.
More soon, presumably, on this exact topic.
One truly final thought
Maybe the dread and the enjoyment are not actually opposites at all, but two honest parts of the exact same experience, arriving in sequence rather than genuinely competing with each other.
More soon.
Thanks, as ever, for reading this far into my ongoing networking confessions.
End.
Genuinely, one more thought
I have started to think that showing up despite the dread is, itself, the actual skill worth developing, considerably more useful than waiting for the dread to disappear entirely before acting.
End.
Thanks for reading, genuinely, as always.
Thanks for reading, genuinely, as always.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
