Challenge: Small Talk

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: My thoughts on small talk

Honestly, my first thought on small talk is simply that I'm bad at it. Simple questions, polite questions, kick my brain over into some sort of weird assessment mode and by the time I work through that people are staring at me and wondering why I can't just give a rote response like everyone else. Like this:

Co-worker: "How are you doing?" 

Me: I don't know, I haven't checked recently, how am I doing? No aches or pains, sinuses are just a bit stuffy but worth complaining about, work seems to be piling up faster than I can get it done but that happens sometimes, things are going pretty well at home... All right, add all that up and I'm doing pretty good. "Doing all right," I reply, a full thirty seconds later. Or, even more awkwardly, "Eh, could be better. I'm not getting enough sleep and my knee's acting up again." Nobody wants to hear that. That's not what the question was for. But you asked me a question, and by all the dark and forgotten gods my brain is going to try to answer it. 

Add to that the fact that I'm incredibly slow to warm up to people I don't know, and it's all just incredibly awkward.