friends

I've been thinking a lot lately about friends.

I mentioned in a post recently that I have come to accept that I'll probably never have a "group" of friends like other people seem to. I tend to be more of a floater and have friends in all different groups. I have always been this way, and I am finally fine with it. That took a loooong time.

However, I've been feeling a little discouraged in the friendship department because I feel like I used to have so many close friends, and they were scattered, but we were close and I could talk to them or visit them (assuming there wasn't an ocean between us) anytime and it was never weird or felt distant.

Now, I feel like I am drifting apart from a few friends I have been close to for a long time. While I know this is natural, I also feel like I am not making new friends either. I'm not saying that one friend can just replace another; it doesn't work like that. I just feel like my friend supply is dwindling and I have this fear that maybe I've forgotten how to make friends. Or that I'm clinging to past friendships (by this I mean people who will always be my friends but are in different places, both metaphorically and geographically from me now) because I don't have new ones to complement the phase of life I'm in right now. All my friends, even the ones I talk to regularly, are from old phases. That's fine, I don't want to lose them, but I just feel like maybe I'm not moving forward socially.

There are a couple of my friends I feel like I'm losing, though. For good, perhaps. One of these I'm kind of okay with, though I'm harboring some resentment about it, and that's probably not healthy. One of them actually makes me really sad.

And I'm sad about the ones I've lost touch with, other than facebook stalking (just being honest!). Those are mostly the friends I met overseas and was very close to at the time I was away and now barely keep in touch with. I wish life didn't happen that way.

contemplating a major life decision... shocking, I know

I feel like if anyone reads this blog, they might think I'm kind of a negative person, or at least a drama queen. But, read at your own risk. While this may be a public way to express one's feelings, I'm okay with that and I use this outlet for two things: 1.) a way to work through thoughts I can't seem to otherwise, and 2.) as writing practice.

First of all, it's Jan. 4, and my New Year's resolutions are... sort of happening. I am reading more, and I plan to cancel my DirectTV in February, so that should help. I haven't written that much more, although I have been blogging more, so that's a start. I want to get back into the creative stuff though, if I can. Or work on more featurey type stuff. I'm hoping my new subscription to Texas Monthly that I got for Christmas will help me come up with ideas. My apartment is still a mess, but in my defense, I JUST got back in town. And I haven't done any yoga recently, but I have been working out consistently, so that's enough for me at the moment.

Anyway. What I really want to discuss in this issue of Sarah's Latest Made-Up Life Crisis is the personal dilemma I've been mulling over in my head for the past week or so.

I have flirted with the idea of joining the Peace Corps on and off since I was a senior in college. I really wish I had done it back then, but no point crying over that now. If I hadn't tried the teaching overseas thing (I did it through private, foreign companies, but still), I might be super gung-ho about it and want to leave tomorrow. Even as recently as Sunday, I was absolutely certain I was going to apply, just to see what happened and I could make a decision later. (If had decided to submit my application this month, I probably would've left nine months to a year from now).

But then I got to thinking. Uh-oh. The thing is (besides the horror stories I read online about people getting raped, murdered, robbed, and coming home with brain worms), I really like what I'm doing now, but sometimes I get torn between that and my yearning sense of travel, adventure, and the need to keep moving. I miss living abroad so much it hurts sometimes. If I was in a situation right now where I hated my job and needed a change in that sense, I'd be gone in a heartbeat.

As much as I want to live, and to see the world and to do something for human rights, I seem to have this problem with perseverance, and I have to wonder if I left my life here (again), if I'd just be doing the same thing in reverse and still never find whatever it was I didn't know I was looking for. Deep down, I know that's true. I'm finally starting to see (and care about) the consequences of my actions before I do impulsive things. And boy, I have done some stupid/crazy things on impulse. Really big things that have caused me to go, "Oh, shit, how do I undo this?" Maybe there really is something to what they say about people under 25 being unable to see consequences because their frontal lobes aren't fully developed.

Even if all my previous...detours were results of being young and naive, it is really important to me to stop giving up. And I also feel, at my very core, that if I keep working the way I am, keep learning, and focus on what I truly want, I will someday get there, and if I don't, working this way will get me somewhere else just as good. What I truly want, if I am being honest with myself, is to move up in the journalism/communications world. I have seen other young reporters give up because they are not making enough money, and to them, it's not worth it anymore. I can't say I'll never get to that point, but at least now, 9 months in, it is still worth it. I guess that's how people who don't really want it get weeded out of any career. I've been weeded out of a few myself (cough..cough...teaching).

I think I am just getting antsy, as I do sometimes, about being ready to get out of the boonies. Ready for the next challenge. I am getting a little bored here (personally and professionally). I need more action. I want to be someone who perseveres, but I still don't see myself staying anywhere for a super long time. But I guess time will tell. And the other thing is, the Peace Corps is always an option. You can never get too old for it. So someday, if I'm being really honest with myself, and I am ready to do that, I can still apply.

I have this history also of making plans to do something cool and then backing out because I'm scared. I don't want to do that, but I don't want to be impulsive and reckless either. The real trick is telling the difference between the two. But all I can do is move forward.

The last thing it boils down to (at least the last I'm going to discuss) is that the idea of settling down, raising a family and/or staying somewhere FOREVER terrifies me. It sounds really horrifying to me right now.

Then again, maybe I've just never had a reason to stay.

in limbo

So I went to this party on Friday night.

I was really excited about it. I hadn't seen the people who were going to be there in a really long time and I was just excited to hang out with people my age, people who didn't have any children, people who might even be single.

It started out pretty good. I said hello to everyone I knew and caught up with them for a few minutes. I got an adult beverage to start me off. I went into the garage, where some people were playing beer pong, with some of the girls. My friend...let's call her Carrie... wanted to introduce me to a guy there, a mutual friend named....Josh. (Disclaimer: I'm using this little, meaningless story to set the tone and as an example for the point I'm about to make. This event, on its own, was NOT a big deal).

So, Carrie grabs Josh on his way back into the house and says "I have someone I want you to meet" to him. She said, "This is Sarah. She's a newspaper reporter. She's a REAL journalist. I think y'all could have a really good conversation." So he seemed impressed by my job, we talked/joked for a minute, and he said, "So you live here in San Antonio?" I said, "No, I live in Beeville." Not a minute later he had left and gone back inside.

The point of that little story is not only that it's next to impossible to meet someone once they find out where I live (although I can't help but feel if I was prettier, skinnier, etc., maybe he would've talked to me anyway, but that's another blog), but let me get to how the rest of the night went. I'll summarize. There were quite a few people there, but they weren't very outgoing. It wasn't easy to mingle. Maybe I just looked a librarian, who knows. Even so. I've been to plenty of parties where I didn't know very many people and still had a good time and found it easy to talk to anyone. I mean, hello, it's a PARTY. I thought that was kind of all in the definition.

So I was over it, feeling pretty down, just waiting for the girls I came with to be ready to leave, when Jessica (Carrie's girlfriend) said to me, "But you're past all this. You have a career. You just don't fit in with this age anymore."

And I felt better. Not 100%, because I still felt like a wallflower, but I realized she was right. Plenty of people there had full time jobs too, but they were younger than me, many of them only out of college for a year or less. I've done plenty of partying. I've done plenty of floundering and drifting. I guess this kind of goes back to my earlier post about finding a balance between having a career and a social life.

I've felt for awhile when I'm in situations like that that I'm observing it all through glass, like I'm at the zoo or something, and I'm watching these girls try too hard to look hot, guys try too hard to take them home, and it just all seems like this superficial dance where everyone's trying so hard to be cool that no one's actually having fun. I miss my overseas friends. I miss my college friends, where it was just hanging out and not a feeding frenzy.

I think what I need is to be around more people in the same place I am in. Other people who are over it but not necessarily ready to settle down. Young professionals, for lack of a better term (could I have come up with more of a cliche?). People who have stable jobs and like to have fun but are past college-style parties. I feel like I'm stuck in this weird limbo.

And I'm not sure those people exist...

....

Follow up to what I wrote last night:

What prompted me to write about that incident was I was debating whether or not I should actually apologize to him.

After writing about it and thinking about it some more, I've decided sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to just go away. It's taken me YEARS to understand that.

the victim unwittingly becomes the assailant

So I'm trying to decide whether I think it's harder to be the one who gets rejected or the one who does the rejecting.

I'm not talking about creepers. I'm talking about genuinely nice guys.

I did a pretty dick move to someone who didn't deserve it about six months ago. (And I know, it's even worse that I'm just now giving it a second thought).

So, this guy that I've known since about my sophomore year of college expressed interest about our senior year. Let's call him Bob. I hung out with him a couple times then, always running away when someone else would come along (I hope that sentence made sense). Anyway, we remained friendly until we no longer lived in Corpus Christi and then lost touch. Note that every time I saw him it was obvious that he still had the feelings. But no real reason for me to feel guilty yet--you're not obligated to reciprocate when someone likes you, of course.

Fast forward about three years. I was feeling exasperated with my dating life and happened to mention to a friend that "I should've gone out with Bob when I had the chance. He would've been so nice to me!"

I got to thinking about that idea a little more, and through some mild facebook stalking, I learned that Bob was single and living not too far from me. So, I casually wrote on his wall, just a "how you been" type thing, and he wrote back. Before long, we were facebook chatting at work, then texting. Getting along really well, mind you. The problem with this situation was never that I didn't like Bob as a person.

A few weeks later, Bob finally asked me out on a date. I say finally because I had been waiting for it by this time. I guess you could say he was playing right into my hands, but I didn't see it that way at the time, even if it was true. So we set up a dinner date.

The night of said date, I was freaking nervous. This could've been because I hadn't been on a real date in almost two years. (Sidenote: I am really bad at dating, and I think I get worse as I get older. I think this is because I try too hard to show people the best version of myself and I get nervous and don't come off well... I could write an entire blog about that, so I'll spare you.) So, the whole time I was worried about being my usual awkward self.

I relaxed a little as the evening progressed. We did have a really good conversation and stayed at the restaurant talking long after we were done eating. But in his car on the way back to my car (which we had left at a meeting point before we had decided where to go), the nerves started to set in again. Was he going to try to kiss me? I wasn't sure I wanted that.

We got back to the parking lot and sat there in awkward silence for a minute. I took off my seat belt and so did he. That's when the panic took hold. I said something like, "Well, thanks for dinner!" and practically ran out of the car and into my car. About five minutes later, I got a text message from him that said, "You left in a hurry." I tried to laugh it off and said, "Haha, no I didn't." Lame, I know.

We had a couple of brief conversations since then. He sent me a happy birthday text on my birthday. Too bad I didn't know who it was at first because I had lost my phone, thus all my numbers, between times I'd talked to him. I guess it didn't occur to me to facebook him for it. Way to be a dick again, Sarah.

So in a nutshell, the very bad thing I did was seeking him out and rejecting him. For the second time. Going after him because I was lonely and I knew he'd be there. The funny (ironic, not haha) thing about all of it is that it never occurred to me, at any time in my life before, that I could be the evil one in a relationship-type situation. I'm so used to being the heartbroken one, the one who always gets screwed over, the one in the "friend zone," etc., etc. I honestly never thought I was capable of screwing over someone else.

I know how much it sucks to get dumped or even just when someone stops calling and you don't know why or what you did.

I guess I'm just another girl.

And the worst thing to admit (I almost didn't even write in this blog), is that in a way, it feels good to have this kind of power.

they're not here

If you don't want to read a few paragraphs of straight-up bitching, I suggest you stop reading now.

Maybe I'm just in a mood right now, but I'm pretty tired of being on the outside of things. What I mean by that is I'm tired of being the one who only gets to hang out on weekends (SOME weekends) who can't be a regular anywhere or do anything spontaneous. Who stops getting invited after awhile because people forget about me. Why does that happen? Because I'm not around regularly!

I've always been kind of a social floater, the one who never really had my own group of friends, just lots of friends who were in various groups. And I could hang out with any of them. While I've always thought it must be kind of cool to have said "group," I've just never been able to pull that off. And that's fine with me. But that's not really what I'm talking about here.

Lately, I'm just fucking lonely. NOT in a "poor me, I don't have a boyfriend" kind of way, more like a "I'm so used to being alone all the time I've started talking to myself in PUBLIC" kind of way.

I don't care about being single or not. But it would be nice to have some fucking friends around. I feel like all of my friends have moved on; they're married, dating, or they've found new, post-college grown up friends. I have a few of those, too. They just happen to be in other states/countries.

I know I have my own career, life, etc. And I love all of my friends and I'm lucky to have them. But they're not here.

I feel myself retreating inward when I'm not at work, and getting annoyed with people I don't know very well more quickly. This can't be good.

I spent the two years before I moved here having a social life instead of a career. Now, I have a career and no social life. Isn't there a happy medium?!

NYR 2011

New Year's Resolutions 2011

1.) Write more. This can be blogging, revising, writing new fiction/poetry or writing sample journalistic pieces using the exercises in Community Journalism. But I definitely want to work on and hone my craft. Like I said the other day, before I just wanted an excuse to write (professionally) because it's one of the few things I'm good at. But now, I really believe in what I'm doing. I could go on about that forever, but I'll stop for now.

2.) Read more. There are so many things I want to read and so much that I am interested in, yet I find myself watching TV or movies instead of reading. Not that there's anything wrong with the art of film, but I've just been slacking with the books. I have been doing a little better with this lately, but I would like to make more time for reading. I will probably end up canceling my DirectTV subscription during 2011.

3.) Do more yoga. Yoga, as good as it makes me feel, seems to end up taking a backseat to other forms of exercise. I end up doing a lot of cardio and strength exercises because I like to really pound it out, feel the burn, get my heart rate up and burn some calories. I would like to find a way to incorporate more yoga into my busy schedule because I think it would help me release more tension, calm down and be more centered in all areas of my life.

4.) Keep up with my dishes/laundry. I do a pretty good job of cleaning. When I get around to it, that is, and lately those times have been few and far between. I feel so good after I do it, too. I wish I could be one of those people that just stays on top of it because they can't stand to do anything else until it's done. Alas, I must accept that I will never be like that, and make the conscious effort not to be a pig. Maybe I should employ the "fake it till I make it" mantra in this category and pretend to be one of those people until I actually become one.

5.) This is possibly the most important one of all. DO NOT PRESSURE MYSELF ABOUT THE ABOVE FOUR. Seriously. I do best when I get stuff done without stressing about it, because I want to. And I need to realize that I am good enough and I don't have to perfect Sarah running around with my perfect little routine and activities all the time. These resolutions are all things I would like to incorporate into my life but not as sources of added stress. If anything, I want them to reduce my stress levels!

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to begin any, some or all of these activities while it is still 2010.