By Kalena Reynolds | Staff Writer

It’s a sunny afternoon, a glass of unsweetened coconut tea from HTeaO in hand, and you’ve just sat down on the couch at the Allbritton House to interview Brad Livingstone.

Your palms are sweaty, and Bu is rolled over for her afternoon nap, and she lies on the floor next to the first gent. “C’mon, you’ve got to ask something good,” you keep telling yourself as you prepare to interview Mr. Livingstone.

You go through your standard list of questions until, finally, one pops into your head that won’t leave.

“Well, anything else?” he asks at the end of the interview. “Just one thing,” you say … “Who said I love you first, you or Linda?”

While I’m nothing short of a beaming extrovert who loves to meet new people, I wasn’t always this gregarious with my banter. After discovering that asking weird questions helped eliminate my social anxiety, I began to dig deeper.

In my early and mid-teens, I struggled to make friends and found conversing exhausting. I rarely craved social interaction and preferred my own company in most instances, but nowadays, this is the complete opposite.

I was also extremely socially awkward; however, as I matured and developed myself while in college, I realized that my awkwardness was often situational and it was completely possible to overcome those feelings if I realized what induced them in the first place.

There have always been topics that have triggered my anxiety in social situations, such as small talk, the weather, recapping my day, the past, foreign politics, baseball or the origin of my name.

While these are often easy conversation starters for strangers, they are hell for me. Attempting to talk about those subjects quite possibly will have me falling over, becoming short of breath and having my eyes roll back in my head.

OK, that’s a bit dramatic, but you get the point.

Part of learning how to get over my social anxiety was learning that conversations with strangers could be playful, fun and deeply fulfilling at the same time if I was willing to reject some social norms and shift to topics that brought a deeper narrative, such as the ones I asked the first gent.

Ultimately, small talk is a choice, and we often forget that we are free to talk about literally anything when meeting new people.

So, I started thinking deeply about what resonated with me. If you talk to me about music, psychology, “The Twilight Saga” or traveling, my eyes will instantly light up, and I can banter for hours.

When I realized that I didn’t have to force-feed half-dissociated “uh huhs” and “oh reallys” into conversations that I had no interest in, I gave myself permission to entertain more controversial topics with strangers and found my love for social interaction.

I freed myself from feeling like I didn’t have to talk about things I didn’t want to and could lean into the unique aspects of my personality. Ultimately, this removed any expectations I had when going into social situations that would normally make me anxious.

Sometimes, this looks like asking something a little out of pocket to strike up a conversation, but if you can disintegrate your fear of people thinking you’re weird, then social interaction will become immensely more fulfilling.

I love asking weird questions and breaking the awkward sound barrier. Not only does this help connect you with people, but it also takes off the pressures of conversing with a playful, light dynamic.

A fulfilled life ultimately is a playful one. I challenge everyone to weave more intimate and deep questions into your small talk routine and watch how much easier it becomes to make lasting friendships.

Questions like, “Have you ever been in love?” and “What’s your biggest fear?” have initiated some of my favorite conversations. Sure, they are weird, and it can be uncomfortable at first to talk about those things, but usually, when people are uncomfortable with intellectual questions, it really means they are uncomfortable and unfamiliar with themselves.

Small talk can be useful, but if you’re someone like me who is deeply inhibited by it, then it’s important to realize that you determine the trajectory of your social interactions.

Discovering what ignites passion inside of you and figuring out how to bring microcosms of that into every social interaction will quickly make conversing feel much more effortless.