I wish I could figure out how to talk to girls...

Yesterday was the employee picnic where I work - pretty much everyone from the non-academic side of campus gets together, eats crabs and meat, drinks beer, sits around and talks, attempts to play sports, and otherwise gets paid for doing something other than work.

So there's a woman in another department I know from working on her computer. Cute, bubbly, and according to her facebook page, recently single. At some point during the picnic, I'm standing next to her talking to her. And that's when I realize I really can't think of a whole lot to say. We make small talk for a while about the basic - where did you grow up, where do you live, ect - but eventually she drifts off to talk to someone else.

Why am I so lame? Why am I so boring? Why can I never figure out what it is that I need to say to people - well, especially to single women? How come I can fill pages of a blog with things to say, and have it at least be interesting enough that a small number of people - some of whom I've never met in the meatspace - voluntarily read it - but I can't figure out what to say to living, breathing people.

Maybe I just haven't met the right person, and that I just haven't found someone I really click with. There are a handful of people I can think of who I can seem to carry on conversations with, who laugh at my lame jokes. But they tend to be the people who everyone likes, who have lots of friends, who get along with everyone. It's probably more them than it is me.

Of course, what it probably comes down to is that I don't really like myself all that much. I'm not sure I'd want to talk to me, so it's pretty hard for me to figure out what anyone else would want to know about me.