I went to a birthday dinner last Saturday. Eight people around a long table. I sat there for three hours and participated, laughed in the right places, answered when someone asked me something. But the whole time I was aware of the noise of it. Not just the volume - the texture. All the overlapping threads, the non-sequiturs, someone's story getting interrupted by someone else's story, the way conversations at a table never fully resolve. I used to be good at this. I used to love a noisy table.

I came home and sat in the quiet for twenty minutes before I could do anything else. Not because it was bad. Just because it was a lot. I've spent so much of the last few years in one-at-a-time conversations - a message here, a call there - that a whole room of people happening at once has started to feel like an overload. I think I'm getting worse at being in groups and I don't know how to reverse it. Is that true for you too? When did you last leave a gathering feeling energized rather than like you needed to recover?