Echo chamber

[firecat]

these comments by lcohen really resonate with me.

Especially the bits about social dry spells and wanting to figure out how to connect with different sorts of people.

Comments

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Is it silly if I feel all happy that one of my favorite people just linked to the journal of another of my favorite people? :-)

[firecat]

Yes, but in a good way :-)

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay, then. I feel better now. ;-P

[lcohen]

i'll vote no and we'll see if that helps ;-) .

[lcohen]

i thought some more about this. i know that you have other cares on your mind, but i'll write this while i'm thinking it and you can respond when it suits your mood or not at all.

one tricky bit is that at the beginning of the process, when you don't have much experience, you can't tell if it's that you're "not doing it right" or that you're not meeting people to whom you can connect. after all, not everyone on the planet has the potential to be a boon companion. i spent a lot of time during that dry period second-guessing myself--was i being picky somehow? was i not really open to making new connections even though i thought i was? did i seem somehow desperate to make friends?

i've run into a lot of those people that i met during that period at many subsequent events and no, i'm just not on their wavelength and vice versa. so i'd let one of my assumptions at the end of a dry evening be: maybe there just wasn't anyone with whom i was destined to become friends at that gathering.

hmmm--that wasn't meant to come out as preachy as i think it did. overthink? me? never!

[firecat]

i spent a lot of time during that dry period second-guessing
myself--was i being picky somehow? was i not really open to making new
connections even though i thought i was? did i seem somehow desperate to
make friends?

Yah, yah, yah. I recognize some of that. Also, I seem to have developed all this social ambivalence, so I am both interested and disinterested in certain people and groups. Then I second-guess myself about how much effort to put into socializing with said people/groups.

I feel like I've regressed to adolescence -- well, I've been busy regressing to adolescence since I turned 40 six months ago, but the first six months of it were rather nice, and this is, well, not. I'm not used to being fussy and dissatisfied so much of the time, and changing my mind every 5 minutes, and...

Oh, your comments didn't sound preachy at all.