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Overwhelmed by company? Five introvert-friendly ways to hang out It can be challenging to leave the house when you’re all out of eye contact, but a low social battery doesn’t have to mean a life short on socialising Jenny Valentish Thu 29 May 2025 01.00 AEST Share 34 When I arrive at a gathering I tend to announce my departure in the same breath as my greeting. “Hi! I brought some wine, where do you want it? Just letting you know I can only stay an hour because I start work really early on Sunday mornings.” Then I might throw in a little yawn and stretch.

Overwhelmed by company? Five introvert-friendly ways to hang out

Overwhelmed by company? Five introvert-friendly ways to hang out
It can be challenging to leave the house when you’re all out of eye contact, but a low social battery doesn’t have to mean a life short on socialising

Jenny Valentish
Thu 29 May 2025 01.00 AEST
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When I arrive at a gathering I tend to announce my departure in the same breath as my greeting. “Hi! I brought some wine, where do you want it? Just letting you know I can only stay an hour because I start work really early on Sunday mornings.” Then I might throw in a little yawn and stretch.

There’s a popular definition of an introvert as being a person whose battery is drained in company, as opposed to an extrovert, who becomes recharged and bounds around like a golden retriever. I like that. It’s not that introverts aren’t social; we’re just more… discerning about it. Different studies have estimated that introverts make up somewhere between 25 and 33 per cent of society, so we’re in the minority. But there's nothing dysfunctional about being introverted, it’s just that we find some social scenarios taxing. So, as a card-carrying introvert, consider me your creative and sympathetic accountant, set on minimising your tax as much as is legally possible.

10 Commandments for Introverts (Body and Soul)

It was Darren McMullen’s obsession with padel that led him to missing an audition and changing the course of his life. Known for his role as Alex Larden on House Husbands and for presenting shows such as The Voice Australia, he had increasingly been sucked into padel tournaments. “My agent went crazy: ‘What were you thinking? What’s your bread and butter?’” McMullen says. “I was like, ‘God, you’re right. I should open a padel centre.’”

‘It’s the best game ever invented’: is padel the new pickleball?

Think back to your school days. At lunchtime, where did you sit? Did you take advantage of the smorgasbord of kids to find someone new and expand your horizons? Probably not. But that’s what Kate Freston advises you do when eating with other people. She’s a veteran of dining at Castlemaine’s Community Lunch – which attracts up to 150 people every Tuesday during school term time. “I used to do a quick scan around the tables and think, ‘Oh God, I hope I don’t sit next to a dud’,” she says sheepishly. “And then, you’re like … maybe I’m the dud! Now, I really like how this crosses over into general life. You may have had a chat with 80-year-old Margaret, then you see her down the street and you may give a little wave and have a little chat.”

Happy meals: is eating together the secret to happiness? (The Guardian)

Not long after M Ellen Burns arrived in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, the state’s borders closed to the rest of Australia and the world for the first time in history. The photographer had been on a road trip from the Blue Mountains to visit her partner’s parents in WA when Covid-19 first began to spread; now she was well and truly stuck. She found work shooting for the town’s tourist board, but a chance meeting with a local barmaid introduced her to the other jewels in Kalgoorlie’s crown: skimpy bars.

Inside the world of Skimpies (The Guardian)

This morning’s location: a field outside Castlemaine, Victoria. The air is thick with flies, attracted to the cow dung but ignoring the nearby dinosaur poo, sturdily constructed from papier-mache. “Oh god,” Sam Neill groans – though these words aren’t actually uttered by Neill but local builder Ian Flavell, who has taken on Neill’s role as palaeontologist Alan Grant – and drops to his knees in front of an ailing triceratops.

The film fans who remade Jurassic Park (The Guardian)

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Everything Harder Than Everyone Else

When Jenny Valentish wrote a memoir about addiction in 2017, she noticed that people who treated drug-taking like an Olympic sport would often hurl themselves into a pursuit like marathon running upon giving up. What stayed constant was the need to push their boundaries.

Woman of Substances

Journalist Jenny Valentish investigates the female experience of drugs and alcohol, using her own story to light the way. Her travels around Australia take her to treatment facilities and AA groups. Mining the expertise of 30 leading researchers, she explores the early predictors of addiction, such as childhood trauma and temperament, and teenage impulsivity.

Cherry Bomb

Word is The Dolls got their record deal through nepotism, but if it wasn’t for Nina sleeping with the right people they wouldn’t be anywhere at all. Now her aunt’s career is threatening to take off again and eclipse her own, and nobody likes her new material. A stretch in rehab’s starting to look like a good career move.

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