Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come

What can I say, I am a sucker for audiobooks narrated by their authors.

It wasn’t the title Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come but its subtitle One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes that caught my eye when Spotify recommended it to me. I am an introvert. Personality tests usually put me somewhere in the 33rd to 10th percentile of extraversion or the 67th to 90th percentile of introversion. I tick-off all the attributes of an introvert: reflective, prefers few close friends, dislikes large parties, can go days without talking to people. Introversion was such a constant in my life that being even an ambivert seemed impossible.

At the beginning of the book, Pan has the same mentality. Then, her friends move away from London, and she becomes reclusive after quitting her job. No longer able to tolerate her shyness and introversion as the excuse preventing her from getting the things she wanted—a good job, friends, and new experiences—Pan tries extroverting. Over the course of a year she talks to strangers (and finds they like her more than she thinks), tells a story on stage, friend-dates, networks, tries improv and standup comedy, and solo travels—all stereotypically extroverted activities. At her standup comedy class, she remarks about extroverts:

I finally found them. Here they all are. Just kidding, they’ve always been easy to find. They’re so loud.

Each of these activities is its own chapter. I found the first half of the book super engaging, listening to Pan overcome her extreme shyness, she once cried at her own surprise birthday party because there was too many people, to end up striking up a conversation with an elderly French man. The second half of the book was less interesting. There are 3 chapters about standup comedy. Despite Pan trying to spin the tale otherwise, I am not convinced Pan enjoyed her trip to Portugal to try psychedelics.

The book has so many takeaways about social relations. Listing them all is beyond the scope of this post. But Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come had 2 philosophical takeaways that I wanted to write down:

I found Pan so fun and captivating in her narration that it is hard to believe others in her actual life could meet her and dismiss her as boring because of her shyness. Each person is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
In moments throughout the book, Pan has regrets over what her shy introversion kept her from. But alas, there are no do-overs in life.

I do not want to regret not doing the thing, whatever the thing, anymore.