2009: Get a social life

but I had lunch with an old friend from work. It had been a while since we’d seen each other, so I took the initiative and invited her out. It was fun and good to get away from work for a change.

So far, the occasional lunch out seems to be the extent of my social life. It’s not much, but it is still an improvement!

arrived on July 4th. Mr. Wren & I had taken some fireworks that we purchased and some lawn chairs out to the part that is behind our house so we could watch the city fireworks display and have a little one of our own.

There were a bunch of neighbor families also in the park. A couple of them came over and just sort of moved us into their group.

I was miserable. It really ruined the whole thing for me. I just was not comfortable suddenly finding myself in this large group of noisy people, and the conversations that were going on were actually psychically painful to hear.

My rigidity in the face of socialization is obviously a stumbling block to achieving this goal.

scheduled for this Friday!

I am getting pretty good at using the days when my boss is out of town as an opportunity to catch up with friends over lunch. Go me!

Mountain Monks canceled this Wednesday evening’s dinner. Oh, well.

I just joined the Mountain Monks group on meetup.com and RSVPed as a maybe for dinner on Wednesday night. There is a topic of conversation, which is the path of service, for the evening. All in all it sounds like it could be interesting.

this group

I’ve never done a meetup.com thing. I think the first thing to do is probably register with the group on line.

Hmmmm…or maybe discuss it with my therapist so I can work up my nerve…!

I had a very nice time. :)

I am so appreciative of all the support I received here at 43T. It really helped me get through my social anxiety and be able to show up and be okay.

My friend is delightful. We have a lot in common. We’re both free-thinkers living in ultra-conservative Utah and feeling out of place. We both work at Universities. We both love the town of Flagstaff and wish we lived there. We’re both crazy about dogs. We both have trouble staying awake during meetings.

We ate at a great restaurant in my small town Our waitress was an awfully nice and interesting woman who is transplanted from New Zealand. She also runs a dog walking and dog sitting and dog adventure business, which is to say that she loves dogs, too. We were talking to her about many things, and she also mentioned how hard it is to meet open-minded people in Utah. She actually seemed like a good potential friend for me, but I do not know how one would go about taking the next step to explore a thing like that. Maybe someone here would have some ideas?

with an online friend who lives in the southern part of the state. We’ve had dinner together once before, and it was very nice. She is someone I like very much, and we have a lot in common.

At the same time, I’m feeling very anxious. My therapist and I have been talking about this issue a lot lately. I realized that once I found suitable opportunities to Get a Social Life, I would be faced with the underlying fact that I am really just afraid of people. We talked about this whole absurdly long history in my life of being hurt by people and how it’s resulted in my conditioned response to stay away.

I also have a lot of shame. Well, what I feel about meeting other people in person in that I am too ugly and repulsive, and so I don’t want to be seen. My therapist says that is shame. It is a powerful feeling!

Of course, this is one of those things that can only be overcome by feeling the fear and doing it anyway. So that is what I will do.

for next week.

This seems to be the extent of my social life, so far, having lunch dates a couple times a month.

Well, it is a start, and it is moving in the right direction, right? Right!

Last month I had lunch with a woman from work. I admire her because she is single and wants a baby & has decided to have a child on her own. We don’t work in the same office, just at the same university. Anyway, yesterday I received a card that she sent me in the mail thanking me for the baby clothes that I gave her and saying that we should get together again soon.

I like her a lot and enjoy our lunches out. So I am going to contact her and ask her to go out again soon.