Aging Sucks, pt. 347,224

Over the various parties since 12/24 Thanksgiving, I have discovered something very annoying to my generally extroverted nature: my hearing loss has now affected my ability to schmooze with multiple people in crowded settings.

Now this is a disability. It's a minor one, compared to disabilities that many people (including some I know) have to deal with, but for me, it's the loss of an ability I held dear.

This means, for example, that some people I wanted to talk to at the annual New Year's Party (that tamidon and I have attended since before Yahoo! existed), I barely got to say anything to. If more than one person was talking to them, and we weren't huddled like a losing football team, I couldn't keep up with the conversation.

I've noticed this happening at Diesel, but not as badly.

And it also means that I am now an asymmetrical converser in crowds. I can still project my voice so that all intended recipients can hear me, but I can no longer hear most responses clearly.

Please: if any of you saw me at a crowded party in the last month and thought that I wasn't paying much attention to you, it wasn't by my choice. I haven't yet learned how to flit from person to person to participate as fully as I used to do by standing still.