This has actually been happening for me. I mean, sure, I still have lonely and depressing evenings, but I’ve made a fair amount of friends at work recently, a few of whom I actually feel comfortable calling up to hang out on a weekend. Big step!
The downside is that all of these people are single girls who are younger than me, which means Greg gets left out in the cold, and I probably am acting less mature than I should. So now to find some couples friends…. 8 months ago
Instagram has really helped me with this goal, but I’m not sure if that counts, as my poor DSLR is sitting there literally collecting dust. I guess snapshots are better than no shots though. 8 months ago
I haven’t quite developed a “ritual” or routine yet, but I have been getting up much earlier. I usually go day by day – sometimes I’ll do some cleaning in the morning, or sit and do some writing and contemplating. I’d like to get more into a routine as far as what I spend my morning doing, but I can’t quite decide whether that time should be spent on doing “me” stuff, or getting chores out of the way to free up my evening. Still though, at least waking up in the morning has become less of a dreadful prospect. 20 months ago
We drove down to the John Heinz refuge to practice biking today, but it was sort of doomed from the start. I guess I was feeling kind of cranky, and Greg taking forever to get ready and then giving me a hard time about what I was wearing didn’t help things. We got there and I just had a really hard time. The terrain was rougher than we’d remembered with lots of gravel and hills that, while walking are imperceptible, but riding felt like mountains. I kept stopping and starting and kind of falling and generally felt really frustrated and inept and exhausted. Halfway through I had kind of a breakdown and started crying and yelling at myself (while no one was around), and that kind of sent me off the deep end. I just feel like I’ll never really be able to do it. I’ll always feel wobbly and have to skid to a stop when I get nervous and then have a slow painful start. When I caught up with Greg and he saw that I was crying and frustrated, he kept saying we should stop and go back, etc, which kind of just made me angrier. I don’t want to just give up, I give up everything. Yes, it’s frustrating and painful and I feel like everyone in the world has mastered this stupid simple thing except me, but I can’t give up. I just needed to be pissed at myself and cry and fall and work through it, but he just didn’t seem to get that. After that I did a bit better on the ride back, going for five or so minutes at a time without stopping. When I got back to the car I was trying to explain the feeling to him, that feeling of being so frustrated because it’s this thing that almost every eight year old can do but I can’t, and he kind of didn’t get it. He sort of just brushed me off saying, “Yeah, it’s hard, but learning new things is hard” and said it was hard when he learned back when he was eight. I guess I was feeling sorry for myself, but I kind of feel like it’s different than just “learning something new.” It involves being more nervous and awkward than you probably are as a kid, and putting yourself in kind of a humiliating situation, and potentially injuring yourself, and above all it’s something that I should’ve done twenty five years ago. So yes, I’m sure learning how to swing on the trapeze and white water kayak and ride a unicycle are also difficult, but those things are kind of like a bonus. I feel like I’m a step below all of those people because I’m trying to do something that most people have been doing all their lives, and that’s almost a necessity in life at some point.
So yeah, kind of frustrating day. 22 months ago
I was just reading a few entries from other people on this subject, and I wanted to share my feelings about it. I made it a point a while ago to stop hiding the fact that I don’t know how to ride a bike. I used to feel embarrassed that I had never learned, but of course as you get older you feel less awkward about things like that. So I’ve just decided to own it. I figure if someone sees me – a 32 year old woman – trying to learn, they’d have to be a pretty terrible person to laugh or make fun of me. I find that people admire someone who’s courageous enough to do something like this at my age. Not to mention, once you tell people you don’t know how to ride, you’d be really surprised at how many people say the same thing – that they either never learned, or haven’t done it in years because they’re scared.
Today when I was riding around my in-laws cul de sac, a man and his little girl came outside and I said hello, and said, “I’m just learning to ride!” The man didn’t even flinch – he said, “Awww…you’ll get it, it just takes a little while. I got on a bike for the first time in years and I was wobbly at first, but I got it after a bit. You’ll be fine”
I think at this age it would be much easier for me to just say, “The hell with it, the ship has sailed on this one and I’m never going to learn.” So as long as you’re willing to laugh at yourself and be open about your nervousness, I think people will admire you for trying. 23 months ago
Well I practiced again today for the first time this year. I got a helmet yesterday and I borrowed my sister-in-law’s bike to practice on. I did ok, no spills or anything. But I have to say, I can’t really envision a time when riding a bike will feel natural to me. I watch people op on and off bikes, ride standing on the pedals, weave in and out of people and cars, and I just think, that will NEVER be me. We’ll see. 23 months ago
Haven’t forgotten about this goal! I have a nice expensive camera that I bought last year and haven’t used much because it’s incredibly complicated, and also because I have sort of forgotten the basics of SLR photography. But fear not! I just bought a book on how to use it, so this summer will be fully photographically documented :) 23 months ago
I sent in an application to PAWS. I’m really hoping this doesn’t turn into one of these “we only need people from 9-5 on weekdays” things like Planned Parenthood was. I’d hate to think that I won’t have an opportunity to be a good person simply because I have a full time job. 23 months ago
I haven’t smoked much pot in my lifetime, and I think it’s time to change that. I feel like I need to relax more, and to open myself up to new ideas and experiences. And what better way to do that than with drugs?? My creativity would probably be better served with LSD but let’s not get crazy here. I simply want to help myself to loosen up and let ideas flow more freely. Meditation would probably help that as well, but right now I’m relatively young and I don’t have any kids, so I need to take advantage of this situation. Now a reliable source to get it from? That’s another story. 23 months ago
Thanks for asking :)
Actually, I wound up changing jobs and am not a manager anymore. Problem solved! ;)
I did change jobs because a good opportunity came up for me, but before that I must say I think I did better with the new people who worked for me. I was definitely more of a boss with them. That being said, I still never really got the hang of the friendly/boss balance. Although I do think I probably did a better job. I just tried not to stress too much about it.
P.S. You can I could obviously never be politicians. Our poll numbers would torture us!! 2 years ago
I recently switched jobs within the same company and my friend was hired in my place. I never had many friends in that department, which made me sad when I left, because there were plenty of people I would’ve liked to have been closer with. Now he seems to be Mr. Popularity there and it’s kind of bumming me out. All of these people who barely gave me the time of day invite him to parties and hang out with him. I know that he’s new there, and a man, which is a bit of a novelty and that could account for some of the difference. But still, it makes me feel kind of shitty.
I’m realizing that I feel like I’m doomed to never have real friends. Most of my current friends are just my husband’s friends from before we met, and now they’re mine by default. My own friends are all sort of just acquaintances, not people who I can call up on a Saturday night.
I’m realizing that the best way to describe the way I feel is that I’m invisible. I think if you asked people, they would say that they like me, but you’d have to ask them first in order for them to think of me at all. It’s amazing, it’s like I’m completely off the friend radar for everyone.
I’m beginning to think it’s almost like a chronic condition, that it’s just who I am and I’ll never be able to get past it. And let me tell you, it sucks. 2 years ago
