Day 1: The book nobody else wrote

For months I've been saying that someone should write a book about networking for people like me. But if anyone has, I haven't been able to find it.

Yes, there have been a few books written about job networking for introverts. But for some reason, I haven't been able to identify with the authors. One of the prominent writers on the subject is a woman, and nearly all of them are young enough that they could be kids of mine if I had married earlier in life. I don't know if either of those factors matter, but I just haven't felt that they're speaking to me.

It just isn't that I'm introverted. Many people are — probably a third of us. And some of them are very successful at networking and life; for example, both major-party presidential candidates in the 2012 U.S. presidential election — Barack Obama and Mitt Romney — are most likely introverts.

I think the problem is that the first bit of advice the networking gurus often give is that career networking is just extension of most of us already do, just not in a career naturally do. All of us network, they say. For example, do you want to find a good car mechanic? Many people would simply call their friends and ask for advice. That's a basic form of networking. But today I can't think of a single person I'd call on the phone to ask without feeling awkward doing so, although there may be a few I'd ask if I were talking to them in person. I don't remember when was the last time I made a social phone call to or made a lunch date with anyone other than a relative.

It didn't strike me how little natural networking I do until I was attending a networking workshop a few months ago and the facilitator asked us to make a list of people in our circle of friends and acquaintances. The idea being that if we know, say, 100 people, and each of them knows 100 people, that's a potential collection of 10,000 people who might have a connection with a job of some sort.

And when people made their lists, I'm not sure there was anyone in the room who had fewer than 100. Some had twice that many. The guy sitting next to me had 250. But when I tried making a list — my criteria were to include anyone I knew in the metropolitan area other than relatives who I could introduce by first and last name who could also introduce me by first and last name — I couldn't even use up my fingers in counting them.  And I had lived here for well over two years.

And that's not because I'm a hermit. I have a job in a workplace with over 100 people on my shift, and I attend church every Sunday with somewhere around the same number of people, even teaching an adult Sunday school class. But I simply was not connecting with people, even if I might see them daily or weekly. And among those people, there are probably dozens who could tell you my name; I'm not invisible. I just don't make the connection.

Beginning today, that's going to change. This will almost never certainly be published except in an online blog that few if any will read, but I'm writing the book that's going to guide me through what could be the biggest change of my life.