Reach out instead of withdrawing

i used to be a lot more open to ideas and people, but i’ve let a few bad experiences close me off and i find i withdraw a lot more now. i’d like to go back to being more active rather than accepting a passive role.

A fellow student in my program, and he’s also a musician. He invited me to a jam session in town, a regular one I already knew about and have been meaning to check out anyway. I guess now I will!

The hilarious crazy thing is that he reached out to me in part because he ran into my little SISTER at an academic conference several states away (he’s involved in both my field [library science] and hers [ethnomusicology]) and ‘recognized’ her (we look a lot alike, or so we’ve been told). What a ridiculously small world is academia.

Anyhoo…serendipity is a gas, and I think I will take him up on his invite eventually. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

I doubt I’ll ever be super-proactive in this regard. But this week I did better about getting out of the house for more than work, which is a good start.

Besides getting out for exercise (which I think has been the catalyst for my other two outward forays) I 1) got together with a folkie guy in the neighborhood for a short little strum-and-sing session and 2) this morning, I went to the neighborhood coffeehouse for a latte and some journaling.

The coffeehouse is great. I will be going back next Sunday (can’t really justify going more than once a week with my budget). It’s the first floor of an old house, full of mismatched tables and chairs, it serves only Fair Trade coffee (at reasonable prices, I might add), and it’s really quiet on a Sunday morning. The few customers that came got coffee to go and left quickly. I love it.

Add that to my massage scheduled for next Saturday, and I’m starting to have some semblance of a life, albeit a very quiet one.

I auditioned for one of the SU choirs yesterday (I’m gunning for the larger Oratorio Society that’s made up of students and community members). The audition went well as far I could tell; if I get in I’ll be rehearsing on Monday nights. I should know by the end of this week. I really miss the interaction that comes with singing in a choir. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

ETA: Darn it. I made it into another choir (not the one I wanted) but I can’t make the rehearsal times. Oh well. Some other time.

I forgot to write this here, but 2 days ago had an hour+ IM conversation with one of my coworkers. I’m not a big IM’er, but it’s handy for work stuff at times. We were chatting about work practicalities and I asked where she was from and suddenly it was a real heart-to-heart…

Anyhow, it was a great conversation (not leastways because I got a lot of interesting dirt on an institution close to me…). She is older and much more experienced than I am, and quite an amazing person. Working full time plus a part time job and raising a kid and a grandkid as well. It makes me feel really stupid for feeling stressed out – I don’t have it so bad after all.

She had a lot of good advice for me as I think about seeking employment after graduation – mainly noting that organizational culture is hugely important and that I need to find a job in a place where the leadership is good and open to new ideas. I’m realizing that this is not so common in library-land as I had hoped. I guess it’s kind of like social work-land in that way.

Good conversation – good for the soul, good for the brain.

I’m realizing that I’ve been very impatient about casual conversation in the past. I guess it’s just my personality, but for some reason when I was growing up, I always thought of it as just something I had to do occasionally, a nicety so that people wouldn’t think I was stand-offish. In the past few years, I’ve slowly been learning that it’s a huge source of important information and perspective. I need to be open to conversation much more often, and actively strike up conversations, even though it takes time and might feel a bit risky at first.

He responded – with a lame forward!

I’m trying not to be pissed, but I would almost rather he had not sent me anything. I hate hate hate lame forwards (though to be totally fair, this was a teensy bit less lame than most).

BAH.

OK, got to let it go. I vowed not to expect anything (although I wasn’t really expecting something that would make me actively angry). I guess it’s a little better than nothing – at least I know that he’s not dead.

In retrospect, not as hard as I thought. Waiting for a response will be the hard part. Actually, I’ll be happy if he’s at least mildly interested in hearing from me and/or not annoyed. That would be fine. Anything else would be…gravy.

I’m considering writing a “hey howareya, here’s what’s up with me” email to a person who wrote a similar email to me several months ago. I have sort of a weird reason for doing it though – I had a dream about him last night. No, not THAT kind of dream! But it was a really interesting one all the same.

I dreamed that he was showing me a design for a tattoo he was about to get. He explained this design as an island – his imaginary lair, or something – that he’d seen and imagined all his life. We pored over the design and he explained every aspect of the island to me. Not that I remember any of the details, but the tattoo was AMAZING and it was really a lovely, sweet dream. And it made me wonder how things are going with him now.

So I guess I will write and find out. It’s scary because I have a bit of a crush on him, or had, or have…I don’t know. Anyway, I am a bit invested in a response from him, I guess. I need to get UN-invested right away if I’m going to write this. If I’m going to reach out, it’s going to be with no explicit or implicit strings attached. I’m just curious. That’s all.

One of my undergraduate classmates had/has a crisis – she needs to get to a project site here in town during our spring break, but has no transportation. She’s already been screwed over twice – once by the weather (the project site was closed), and once by the school’s volunteer transport (the driver overslept! infuriating!).

I felt bad for her. Instead of just making sympathetic noises and walking away like I often do, I offered to drive her to the site. She was really thankful, and really, it’s not that big a deal for me. I have a car (albeit a crappy one), and I’ll be generally hanging around and doing homework, and the site is not far away at all.

It’s not a big thing, but I haven’t stretched out my neck for anyone in a long time, or so it seems.

It feels good to help, if only just a little.

... would love it if anyone reached out to them! Withdrawing is good once in a while, but only once in a while…