Yesterday, July 6th, was my one year anniversay on 43 Things. I remember it was late in the evening when I created my account, maybe 10:30 or 11 PM. I had heard about the site several weeks before from a friend I had at the time who said he had come across it and thought it could be something that could help me since I had told him that I was unfocused. I spent some time thinking about what goals I would like to set for myself but wasn’t sure how committed I would really be or if I wanted to put all this stuff on the internet. Then near the end of last June (not last month but a year ago from last month, just to be clear) I had a bad social experience which made me question what was wrong with my approach toward dealing with people. So, over the next couple of weeks I thought seriously about what I needed to work on to make myself better in my relationships and as a person in general.

My number one goal last year was to learn to swim which I adopted mainly on the suggestion of the same friend who told me about the site and who also told me I should complete at least one of the things on an old list I had put together when I was 22 of things I wanted to complete before I turned 30. One of those things was to learn to swim, and my friend told me that this was definitely within my grasp. My 30th birthday came and went last fall and I didn’t complete the goal, but that same friend had also told me that to keep starting but not finishing things was a serious character flaw. I renewed my focus on this goal again this summer mostly because of what my friend had told me. I want to finish what I start for once and even more significantly I sincerely don’t want to let him down, not that it really means anything to him, but still…

My next four goals were all related to the idea of improving my social skills. They were to be more assertive, to be more trusting, to be more open and honest with people and to learn to maintain and strengthen my existing friendships. I’m still working on being more assertive, which I think can help me in a lot of ways not just socially, but the other three goals I gave up on. After much agonizing and discussion here, I realized that I didn’t have the right mentality to improve on those things and that I probably have some deeper issues I need to work through before I can be successful. I seem to not have the right understanding of what friendship is or what to expect from it, so I’m probably better off thinking about how to improve my life in other ways…

I was chewing gum the other day and was thinking about how relationships with other people are quite like chewing gum. You chew gum until you sucked out all the juice and then you spit it out. People take whatever they need from the other until they have taken all they can and then they let go and move on. I think I could be happy if I could only accept this idea as true and be okay with it. Although I feel like I’m the gum all the time in this analogy, if I think hard and I’m really honest I would probably realize that I’m no different from anyone else and I do the same. I don’t want to be the gum that gets spit out and then annoyingly gets stuck on the bottom of someone’s shoe and that they then have to expend a lot of effort to pry off. I feel like I’m often that person, and I don’t want to be that anymore.

Even if I haven’t made as much progress as I should have in completing my most significant goals, I think 43 Things has helped me significantly in organizing and verbalizing the things I want to accomplish and even if I don’t accomplish so much I have learned a tremendous amount about myself and why I think the way I do. I’m especially grateful for the feedback I get from other users and enjoy the opportunities where I can add value to someone else in a positive way. I don’t have much of a social life so the intereaction here does help to fill some of that gap although I have to be careful to remember that an “internet friend” isn’t quite the same thing as a “real life friend”. People I know in “real life” aren’t particularly interested in the details of my crappy life, but I’m happy to have found an outlet where I can write about it whenever I want and whoever chooses can read about it as they desire to or not. I also like the opportunity to read about what others wish to share about their lives. So, I’m really glad I was introduced to 43 Things…