Freaking out about "small talk"

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yes i get that same feeling, sometimes people seem more social then me on this site and some times i feel more social then them.

As for asking them questions about themselves, that is what i used to do and found that despite the fact that they love to talk about themselves when they are done. I get a weird feeling that they are unsatisfied? and they tend to leave quit fast witout asking me about myself. not sure why that is maybe they feel that it is my turn to talk as long as they have talked (which i give them all the time they want) and they think i will bore them as they had bored me.?

I have switched my approach a bit now that i understand a bit more the structure or small talk and now try to participate more in it. For some reason i always get stuck after the first question and cant bring up another topic. So i tried bringing up the first easy topic like the weather and let them change it but some how, i feel like its always me that is killing the convo. I have no idea how some one can go to some ones house and do that all night, it really baffles me.

I hate it so much and I really hate that it's required in ridiculous situations. For instance I recently had to call about a bill. After being transferred and put on hold for a 1/2 hour he gave me to a woman. She wanted to make chit chat. I pretended to be pleasant but I was basically screaming in my head "just alter this for me, this is your job, not cocktail hour!", so annoying.

Plus I hate how people say "How are you?" because they want you to say fine. When I was younger I dreaded this question because I took it literally and would go into a spiel on whatever my current problems were which would cause the other person to get uncomfortable. Once I got into the "fine" habit someone actually tried to dig & I told them "you don't really care or want to know". They were offended but I could see it was true.