Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come | Jessica Pan

Title: Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come

Author: Jessica Pan

As a devoted introvert whose ideal afternoon is one spent in blissful solitude, I approached Jessica Pan's Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come with a healthy dose of side-eye. The premise alone--a self-proclaimed shy introvert pledging to spend an entire year acting like an extrovert--sounds less like a self-improvement journey and more like a custom-designed psychological thriller. 

I wasn't expecting it to become one of my favorite nonfiction books of the year. What follows is hilarious, deeply relatable, and unexpectedly moving.

Most motivational "get out of your comfort zone" books feel like they were written by innate extroverts who simply don't understand the physical drain of a crowded room. Pan, however, writes entirely from the trenches of true introversion. After her closest friends move away, she realizes she's left with the adult version of an almost impossible task: making new close friends from scratch. If you think it's hard finding a new doctor or dentist, try replacing the people who'd help you bury a body. Determined to find her people, she throws herself into increasingly terrifying social experiments, from networking events and Bumble BFF to improv classes and eventually stand-up comedy.

What makes this book work is that Pan never cheats. It would have been easy to rewrite every uncomfortable experience as secretly exhilarating, but she doesn't. Some events are awkward. Some are miserable. Some are worth doing anyway. That honesty gives the book its credibility.

Stand-up comedy is the point where I stopped thinking, "This is a clever premise for a memoir," and started rooting for Pan. Up until then, the experiment is entertaining. By the time she takes the stage, it has become something much more personal. Whether the performance succeeds almost feels beside the point. She's stopped trying to reinvent herself and started proving to herself that anxiety doesn't always deserve the final say.

The book ends with Pan hosting a Friendsgiving dinner with people she met over the course over the year. I liked that the ending didn't feel like a fairy tale where she'd magically become an extrovert. She was still herself. She'd simply stopped letting "I'm an introvert" answer every question before she'd even asked it.

For all of its humor, the book is also surprisingly practical. I came away with a handful of ideas I genuinely liked, from seeking out mentors to creating a pre-event "pump-up" routine to something as simple as putting together a great playlist if you're hosting people. They aren't life-changing revelations, but they're the kind of small, actionable ideas that stick with you.

I highlighted far more passages than I expected to. Every few pages she'd describe some bizarre internal monologue before a social interaction and I'd think, "Well...that feels a little too familiar." This isn't the most beautifully written memoir I've ever read, but it succeeds because it's funny, disarmingly honest, and captures the experience of being an introvert with a level of accuracy that felt almost uncomfortably personal. If you've ever canceled plans because staying home sounded better, there's a good chance you'll see yourself somewhere in these pages.

 Five out of five stars.