I have this odd interest in watching films that make me feel uncomfortable. I don't mean uncomfortable in the horror film jump scare sense- I can't really stand most of those films anyway and I suspect my habit of wiki-ing films before watching them stemmed from this- but more along the lines of the unsettling feeling in your stomach sense, like the tension you would feel from a scene in a Hitchcock film. Incidentally, there haven't been many films coming out this year that I've actually been interested in watching compared to the last (Star Trek was okay, Monsters University met expectations, Pacific Rim was surprisingly fun... yeah that's about it), or at least from the major mainstream releases anyway. Recently though, I watched two films on limited release that were probably some of the best I've seen in a while, and I should watch limited release films more often. But anyway, this post covers the first of those. I'll get to the second one another time.
About a month ago I saw Fruitvale Station with a friend in SF. It's a drama film based on the BART Police shooting of Oscar Grant that occurred a few years ago, which to be honest I wasn't fully conscious of at the time aside from the mass protesting that took place as a result of it. The film felt particularly even more relevant at the time I saw it, though, given that the decision regarding the case of Trayvon Martin had just come out a week before, and the week following it had just been heavy and depressing.
The film itself covers the last day of Oscar Grant's life leading up to the shooting event, of which clips from the actual incident are shown in the first few minutes to establish the connection in a manner that felt reminiscent to me of the 9/11 clips in Zero Dark Thirty. Oscar Grant is portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, an actor I fondly remembered as the teenage Wallace from the first season of The Wire, and I was surprised to see how much he'd grown since then. The 24 hours leading up to the event seem to play out like any other day in the life of an average, formerly delinquent but struggling black male living in East Bay. The film even felt a touch close to home with shots of BART and of course Fruitvale Station among other things. Some of the more touching and poignant moments, such as Grant's interactions with his young daughter, added a pleasant mood to the film and helped to convey how normal his life was... up until that fateful moment, that is.
It is all the more tragic to witness it all go down in succession, hoping for a happy resolution for this man and his family even though you already know what happened in real life. The last half hour or so was just gut-wrenching to watch. My friend had to leave the theater until the film ended, and I teared up. (...okay, so I haven't legitimately cried in a film since An American Tail in elementary school... but nowadays if something makes me tear up, it's pretty legit.)
Granted, it's been mentioned online that parts of the film were over-dramatized or inserted for effect, as would likely any other film based off of a true story. The director couldn't have known what exactly did go through Oscar Grant's mind on the last day of his life, and what we have left is a film that makes clear its sympathies towards the victim of the actual incident overall. I feel somewhat mixed on how appropriate it is to depict real life events in a fictionalized format; while the film doesn't necessarily make any outright claims towards being the end-all truth of the matter, it's tempting to associate its depiction of Grant with the real man when you're caught in the emotion of the moment, and especially when juxtaposed with clips of the actual incident and aftermath. I have to wonder how much worse it could be if it had been any other heavily politicized event... like Trayvon.
(I felt a similar feeling after Zero Dark Thirty as well, except the premise for that film as a CIA operation with a few fictionalized characters was removed enough that I didn't mind it so much, whereas Oscar here is someone people actually did know in real life.)
But at the least, it makes for a compelling drama and a haunting, yet beautiful film. I can't speak as much as to how the actual shooting was portrayed except that it doesn't really seem to point the finger at anyone involved so much as it does make it seem like an unfortunate combination of circumstance and bad timing. It doesn't tug too hard on the political aspects of the incident so much as it does attempt to create a story, one that makes you reconsider how easily a full life can just disappear when you least expect it. And that's how tragic events are in real life... quick and unexpected. but with lasting consequences.
I'd recommend Fruitvale Station to anyone, but with a note that it's not really one of those films you watch to be entertained, so much as to be disturbed and moved. And I kinda wish there there were more prominent movies available to watch in theaters like it, although I have to admit I haven't been paying attention to what's been coming out that closely yet. Maybe I'll start doing so again.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Rolling Along
I went on a retreat this weekend with River folks to a camp in the mountainous woods (okay, maybe not the right usage of words but whatever) between San Jose and Santa Cruz. The route there was about the same as the one taken for Justin and Miki's camping trip to Big Basin last year up to a certain point, and it invoked a few old memories from last year (including me getting owned by a root on a hiking trail, but that's another story). Overall, it was a great opportunity to take a moment to relax, away from the hustle and bustle-or sometimes lack thereof- of working life and coming home tired and wittling the night hours away on Fallout 2, which was pretty much all I did last week.
(...seriously, the old Fallout games are like a time sinkhole once you figure out how to not get massacred by every random radscorpion and evil plant and big gun wielding band of thugs you meet. Where I last left off I was trying to figure out how to become a made man of each of the 4 ruling families of New Reno without getting killed off by the other three for siding with their rivals, and then how to assassinate the family heads after joining them. It's fun.)
The speaker at this retreat was Dave Schmelzer, the author of the book Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist and former pastor at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Boston, which I knew little of prior to this weekend. When it comes to books that tend to get sold at the "book table" at these retreats like his book, I tend to have a like/dislike interest in them. They usually have something interesting to say, but at the same times there's always something else about them I don't like as much, like some aspect they overlook in what they're saying that merits criticism or just something in their argument that's lacking. Dave's book on the other hand (which I haven't finished yet), seems to fit in a weird niche of being more rambly-thought-tangential than usual but in a way that still makes sense, which also happens to be how he speaks in person as well. It also partly addresses a topic I find personally relevant - the disconnect in thoughts between religious and non-religious people, only not so much black-and-white because like everything else these fall along a spectrum.
Dave refers to the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's 4 stages of spiritual development, which surprisingly makes sense (at least to me) as a model for understanding where people stand spiritually (although I'm curious as to what criticism there may be of it since relying too much on models like these tends to be a slippery slope. cue the rampant and incessant discussion of Myers-Briggs whenever I hang around church folks). It categorizes this in a way such that atheists and agnostics, particularly those who have left a faith, are possibly actually more developed in this respect than many of those who consider themselves religious... which would explain why some religious populations (as in America) feel more backwards in thought. It also delves into why people on both sides have issues communicating with each other - the disconnect between people who are at different stages of development. It's an interesting concept - although granted, even Dave admitted that it's normal to still have thoughts from previous stages even when someone is supposedly at stage 4.
Dave also referenced the famous "This Is Water" commencement speech of David Foster Wallace, an author I've been meaning to read for a while if I ever get around to it, who's been called the voice of our post-modern age and whose posthumously published work The Pale King was a factor into why the Pulitzer Prize for fiction wasn't awarded last year. If you have the time, it's worth a listen. It addresses something I've been finding more personally relevant ever since I started working: the importance of being conscious in spite of the mundane and the frustration that generally accompanies everyday adult life. To be able to consider other points of view and modes of thinking besides the lens of self, to have agency in choosing what exactly it is you think about, because what's important isn't so much possessing knowledge as it is simply being aware of what's in front of you... and not just get lost in the stream of your own internal monologue, which I'm almost always guilty of on a regular basis. But David Foster Wallace words it better than I can.
It's funny, because on the way to the retreat while driving, I was just thinking about this. How unconscious I've been the past while, constantly on auto-pilot in my responses to people and motion through life without consideration of bigger things, with the majority of my days of late revolving around thoughts of some form of "how am I going to finish this game this week" and nothing else. I've been neglecting personal responsibilities, what I'm doing with my life, where I am with God, and a bunch of other concerns all for the sake of entertaining myself just one more day. One more day, when days can turn into weeks and then years, where a subtle disease like cancer could spring up out of nowhere and end it all when I least expect it. Okay, maybe I'm being somewhat melodramatic and border-line hypochondriac there, but the fear exists. I don't know when my life will end, and yet I'm trudging on waiting for another day to go by at work so I can go home, while silently ignoring that voice in my head yelling, "what are you doing with your life?"
This weekend was a time for me to stop constantly moving for a moment and reconsider the trajectory my life has taken. How long can I keep sitting around here at this job and continue the humdrum routine I've been following for the past two years? How long am I going to continue to let these burdens continue to weigh me down, stop me from moving on with my life, continue to make me grumble inside and cynically complain whenever a worship song is playing? How long am I going to keep on pursuing random entertainment for the sake of a short-term distraction, an activity to keep me occupied from reexamining my thoughts and beliefs and face concerns I've neglected over the years? How much longer?
I realized eventually that when it came down to it, much of my lack of action in a direction I would find meaningful up to this point stems from an overwhelming sense of fear. Fear of uncertainty, fear of not knowing the truth, fear of lacking control over my future, fear of failure, fear of being rejected, fear of missing out. I settled for where I am now because it's the safe thing to do. I grew up with the view that the world was a scary place and that I should avoid risky situations and dangers and trusting people too much, and instead favor stability and comfort over anything else. And while that isn't an overtly bad way of life in itself, overemphasizing it tends to make life feel static and devoid of, ironically, life.
If anything, what I ought to be most afraid of is living a dead, unexamined life. If I take a look at the journal entries I've actually managed to write this past year, most of them are hardly joyful and instead tend toward being anxious or cynical. I ought to have plenty of reason to be happy or even thankful for the experiences I've been having, given how "busy" I somehow seem to be this year, but for some reason the main feeling I can recall experiencing from these past two years is an overall sense of anxiety and cynicism. I stopped believing that God would actually do anything in the problems I continued to see in myself and others and the world on a day-to-day basis. I stopped really praying for anything. I lost confidence in my own ability to maintain meaningful friendships with anyone I met given a lack of consistency in having even normal conversations. I went through a debilitating series of depressive moments earlier this year that led me at one point to drive to work (and then McDonald's) at 4 in the morning because I couldn't sleep anymore. I would frequently find myself somewhere, whether it be at church or at a social gathering or some other event, and wondering, "what am I even doing here?" I was even afraid of going to this retreat because I might just suffer that same thought the entire time I was there. What am I doing here. What am I doing here. What am I doing here.
After all of this, I'm just tired right now. Tired of not really living life. All that I have now, all this so-called convenience and privilege and comfort and job security and complacency means nothing if I can't enjoy it. The numbers of reasons for why I might be dissatisfied right now are too great and overwhelming as it is, although it could probably be easily summed together somewhere along the lines of, "suffering exists." But that's no excuse for not standing up, looking back at it in the face, unflinching, and continuing to live consciously, meaningfully, and with purpose. I'm making a commitment to live each day in the moment, and not solely for my own self-interest. Of course, it'll more difficult to keep up than just saying it would suggest, and I don't really have that great of a track record with commitments so far. Staying conscious everyday in itself is enough of a struggle as it is - even David Foster Wallace committed suicide. But that's how it goes sometimes, I guess.
Following along with my thought that there's a song from a musical for every occasion, there's a musical called Merrily We Roll Along whose opening song ties into this theme (and is probably my favorite musical that I haven't seen live yet now, ever since I finally saw Into the Woods this summer). The title and lyrics say it all. Merrily we roll along. How did you get to be here? What was the moment? When I was feeling depressed earlier this year, I kept coming back to the songs from this musical: Merrily We Roll Along, Like It Was, Old Friends, Not a Day Goes By, Now You Know - all of them cautious reminders of how easy it is for your life to fall off track if you don't pay attention as time goes by. At least you can still fix things and try for your dreams while there's still time... while you're still alive.
(...seriously, the old Fallout games are like a time sinkhole once you figure out how to not get massacred by every random radscorpion and evil plant and big gun wielding band of thugs you meet. Where I last left off I was trying to figure out how to become a made man of each of the 4 ruling families of New Reno without getting killed off by the other three for siding with their rivals, and then how to assassinate the family heads after joining them. It's fun.)
The speaker at this retreat was Dave Schmelzer, the author of the book Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist and former pastor at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Boston, which I knew little of prior to this weekend. When it comes to books that tend to get sold at the "book table" at these retreats like his book, I tend to have a like/dislike interest in them. They usually have something interesting to say, but at the same times there's always something else about them I don't like as much, like some aspect they overlook in what they're saying that merits criticism or just something in their argument that's lacking. Dave's book on the other hand (which I haven't finished yet), seems to fit in a weird niche of being more rambly-thought-tangential than usual but in a way that still makes sense, which also happens to be how he speaks in person as well. It also partly addresses a topic I find personally relevant - the disconnect in thoughts between religious and non-religious people, only not so much black-and-white because like everything else these fall along a spectrum.
Dave refers to the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's 4 stages of spiritual development, which surprisingly makes sense (at least to me) as a model for understanding where people stand spiritually (although I'm curious as to what criticism there may be of it since relying too much on models like these tends to be a slippery slope. cue the rampant and incessant discussion of Myers-Briggs whenever I hang around church folks). It categorizes this in a way such that atheists and agnostics, particularly those who have left a faith, are possibly actually more developed in this respect than many of those who consider themselves religious... which would explain why some religious populations (as in America) feel more backwards in thought. It also delves into why people on both sides have issues communicating with each other - the disconnect between people who are at different stages of development. It's an interesting concept - although granted, even Dave admitted that it's normal to still have thoughts from previous stages even when someone is supposedly at stage 4.
Dave also referenced the famous "This Is Water" commencement speech of David Foster Wallace, an author I've been meaning to read for a while if I ever get around to it, who's been called the voice of our post-modern age and whose posthumously published work The Pale King was a factor into why the Pulitzer Prize for fiction wasn't awarded last year. If you have the time, it's worth a listen. It addresses something I've been finding more personally relevant ever since I started working: the importance of being conscious in spite of the mundane and the frustration that generally accompanies everyday adult life. To be able to consider other points of view and modes of thinking besides the lens of self, to have agency in choosing what exactly it is you think about, because what's important isn't so much possessing knowledge as it is simply being aware of what's in front of you... and not just get lost in the stream of your own internal monologue, which I'm almost always guilty of on a regular basis. But David Foster Wallace words it better than I can.
It's funny, because on the way to the retreat while driving, I was just thinking about this. How unconscious I've been the past while, constantly on auto-pilot in my responses to people and motion through life without consideration of bigger things, with the majority of my days of late revolving around thoughts of some form of "how am I going to finish this game this week" and nothing else. I've been neglecting personal responsibilities, what I'm doing with my life, where I am with God, and a bunch of other concerns all for the sake of entertaining myself just one more day. One more day, when days can turn into weeks and then years, where a subtle disease like cancer could spring up out of nowhere and end it all when I least expect it. Okay, maybe I'm being somewhat melodramatic and border-line hypochondriac there, but the fear exists. I don't know when my life will end, and yet I'm trudging on waiting for another day to go by at work so I can go home, while silently ignoring that voice in my head yelling, "what are you doing with your life?"
This weekend was a time for me to stop constantly moving for a moment and reconsider the trajectory my life has taken. How long can I keep sitting around here at this job and continue the humdrum routine I've been following for the past two years? How long am I going to continue to let these burdens continue to weigh me down, stop me from moving on with my life, continue to make me grumble inside and cynically complain whenever a worship song is playing? How long am I going to keep on pursuing random entertainment for the sake of a short-term distraction, an activity to keep me occupied from reexamining my thoughts and beliefs and face concerns I've neglected over the years? How much longer?
I realized eventually that when it came down to it, much of my lack of action in a direction I would find meaningful up to this point stems from an overwhelming sense of fear. Fear of uncertainty, fear of not knowing the truth, fear of lacking control over my future, fear of failure, fear of being rejected, fear of missing out. I settled for where I am now because it's the safe thing to do. I grew up with the view that the world was a scary place and that I should avoid risky situations and dangers and trusting people too much, and instead favor stability and comfort over anything else. And while that isn't an overtly bad way of life in itself, overemphasizing it tends to make life feel static and devoid of, ironically, life.
If anything, what I ought to be most afraid of is living a dead, unexamined life. If I take a look at the journal entries I've actually managed to write this past year, most of them are hardly joyful and instead tend toward being anxious or cynical. I ought to have plenty of reason to be happy or even thankful for the experiences I've been having, given how "busy" I somehow seem to be this year, but for some reason the main feeling I can recall experiencing from these past two years is an overall sense of anxiety and cynicism. I stopped believing that God would actually do anything in the problems I continued to see in myself and others and the world on a day-to-day basis. I stopped really praying for anything. I lost confidence in my own ability to maintain meaningful friendships with anyone I met given a lack of consistency in having even normal conversations. I went through a debilitating series of depressive moments earlier this year that led me at one point to drive to work (and then McDonald's) at 4 in the morning because I couldn't sleep anymore. I would frequently find myself somewhere, whether it be at church or at a social gathering or some other event, and wondering, "what am I even doing here?" I was even afraid of going to this retreat because I might just suffer that same thought the entire time I was there. What am I doing here. What am I doing here. What am I doing here.
After all of this, I'm just tired right now. Tired of not really living life. All that I have now, all this so-called convenience and privilege and comfort and job security and complacency means nothing if I can't enjoy it. The numbers of reasons for why I might be dissatisfied right now are too great and overwhelming as it is, although it could probably be easily summed together somewhere along the lines of, "suffering exists." But that's no excuse for not standing up, looking back at it in the face, unflinching, and continuing to live consciously, meaningfully, and with purpose. I'm making a commitment to live each day in the moment, and not solely for my own self-interest. Of course, it'll more difficult to keep up than just saying it would suggest, and I don't really have that great of a track record with commitments so far. Staying conscious everyday in itself is enough of a struggle as it is - even David Foster Wallace committed suicide. But that's how it goes sometimes, I guess.
Following along with my thought that there's a song from a musical for every occasion, there's a musical called Merrily We Roll Along whose opening song ties into this theme (and is probably my favorite musical that I haven't seen live yet now, ever since I finally saw Into the Woods this summer). The title and lyrics say it all. Merrily we roll along. How did you get to be here? What was the moment? When I was feeling depressed earlier this year, I kept coming back to the songs from this musical: Merrily We Roll Along, Like It Was, Old Friends, Not a Day Goes By, Now You Know - all of them cautious reminders of how easy it is for your life to fall off track if you don't pay attention as time goes by. At least you can still fix things and try for your dreams while there's still time... while you're still alive.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
on being social
My antisocial mood moments have been on the rise lately.
Not that I don't want to be social... but I don't feel like starting things, although I somehow find myself in a position of doing so sometimes anyway. I have a housewarming coming up this weekend and I'm somewhat dreading whatever I've gotten myself into because I have no idea what to expect of it. I haven't really planned it out that much yet.
Some friends lately have called me a "social butterfly" or whatever because it seems like I'm out and about all the time... but to be honest, I don't really feel it at all. Maybe I do a good job of putting events on my schedule together so it seems like I'm always busy and not available, but as it went with my last busy weekend, at every event I show up to with more than maybe 3 or 4 people, I generally end up feeling out of place or just there, which probably shows itself most by my tendency to be quiet and just sit there and space out while everyone else is talking. It makes me wonder at those times why I'm really there to begin with, other than maybe "keeping up the appearance" of being around people. I even distinctly recall an (inebriated) person I was walking home once from an event tell me, "I was surprised to see you here... You're a pretty quiet person." Which lends itself into why I don't consistently hang out with most people on a regular basis... and why everyone seems find me busy all the time.
[On a random note, Ryan mentioned recently that when we first started going to class together... a semester after meeting, I didn't really say anything until he mentioned Smash Bros once. Funny how circumstances change like that. If anything, my experiences pretty much tell me that I take a long time to befriend most people after meeting them.]
It astounds me how I am capable of interacting with people sometimes. The conversations I have often tend to feel out of sync with whatever is going on in my head at the moment or in general, although parts of it will come out in gushes, like if the game I'm preoccupied with happens to come up. (I'm still on a game binge by the way.) But really, I've sat in front of a mirror before and wondered if the person I can see is the same person everyone else sees when they interact with me. It's like I'm just doing a decent job of putting up a facade for communicating with people somehow, when inside I have something else completely different on my mind, and at that moment I just want to be left to my own devices, which is generally what happens at work for me anyway. I usually have this filter on that blocks out most of what's been going on in my head when I talk to people, or else I imagine I'd be a lot more melodramatic and emotional all the time. I've actually contemplated making a private twitter to document the random tangential thoughts that enter my head sometimes... but there's a reason why I don't reveal these things to people.
All that said, I don't hate interacting with people - I actually enjoy listening to others a lot - I just find it tiring to keep up with everyone. Which is why I guess the relationships that have flourished the most for me are the ones that don't require the upkeep of having to talk everyday or even that often, the ones that don't have me worrying if they're still there or not just because we haven't hung out in a while (and oftentimes I feel like I have to be the one to initiate anyway). I appreciate being able to enjoy a good day with someone even if we haven't talked for months or years - and in fact it's starting to feel more normal for me now. (I'm probably repeating myself here.)
On another note, there's a lot going on in our heads during social interaction that we take for granted. About a year ago I was sitting in on a group session for high schoolers with disorders on the autism spectrum (long story) and a lot of the topics covered by the teacher felt somewhere between juvenile and common knowledge, when in reality for those students it really wasn't. Cues that most of us somehow manage to pick up through interactions and experiences had to be taught to these kids, made explicit for them by adults. And some of them were the victims of bullying and in one case was moving schools all the time for all the trouble he kept getting into... for not responding well to bullying. I have to admit, if I were in that situation I wouldn't know what to do either.
Looking at it all, it reminded me of experiences I'd almost forgotten from a long time ago, back when I was still in middle school and wasn't really friends with anyone in my class. I don't remember why, but when I was younger I'd already developed a habit of watching other kids play on the playground, but not really joining in with them on anything... or perhaps I did a few times, but I don't remember much of it. After a while I'd developed a habit of living in my own world at recess, playing on the playground by myself while make believing stuff like a scenario where all of the buildings and cars near me were boats traveling in parallel on a huge river, somewhere, while mostly ignoring whatever else was going on at recess. Come to think of it, there were a few people I did interact with early on, but all of them wound up moving to different schools at some point or were in the younger grades, and those relationships didn't keep for long.
This kept on until my teacher at the time noted my lack of social activity at recess/lunch to my parents at a parent-teacher conference, and then the next thing I knew we had assigned tables per grade at lunch, and then somehow I made friends with the people in my class who sat at the same table as me... who I vaguely recalled choosing to sit with in the first place because I found them least cumbersome to deal with... I don't know what was going on in my head at the time. There was one time one of them even told me to go away, which really upset me and I think I was almost ready to give up on having friends, but somehow we wound up being good friends a year later due to random circumstances and luck I guess, and I don't think that person would remember this anyway. Well, kids tend to be pretty fickle at that age in general.
The point of that all being, being social is a lot harder (for some of us at least) than we generally give it credit for. And I even have a tendency to prefer to distance myself away from people who aren't that social or seem uncomfortable to be around, despite the fact that those people are as in much need of community and friendship as anyone else and oftentimes have a lot of insight into things that the rest of us don't really notice in life. I keep having to remind myself that every time I find myself in social situations, both where I'm the one with the privilege of extending a hand out to people and where I'm the one who feels excluded or left out. Even when it turns out that there's isn't an easy way to integrate some people with a community, because they don't happen to fit in for some reason like they make others uncomfortable, and it isn't usually clear how exactly one can fix this issue.
And the advent of instant messaging and texting and facebook and all of that just makes this even more complicated. Most of the time I don't give it as much thought or worry like I used to when I was younger and suffered from instant messaging anxiety, but I still feel uncomfortable sometimes when people don't respond in a timely fashion (or just ever) due to the lack of cues in these forms of communication that would be accessible in physical interaction. Not that physical interaction is that much better, though... I guess I can still be oblivious to when people actually don't really like me, for one thing. I'm assuming there are people out there who still don't based off of past history, but whatever... It's not like that knowledge would change much, and you can't please everyone anyway.
I still have moments every week where I just feel like cutting off contact with everyone and keeping to myself, because it's easier that way than having to deal with the anxiety and the unnecessary worrying I often exhibit when it comes to the prospect of keeping up with people and not knowing what to do in social situations I'm not comfortable with, as they happen all the time. But I have to remind myself that these ties and relationships are worth it in the long run, because they're part of what makes this life worth living.
Now excuse me while I go off and be anti-social for a while thanks to my sickness. I think I ate some bad leftovers yesterday and I've been feeling queasy all day... and couldn't sleep last night due to a combination of sleeping early and waking up in the middle of the night and being too awake to fall asleep + it being too hot + random joint and back aches + migraine level headaches from getting too little sleep and then napping too much + my mind being unstable in such conditions and experiencing a half-awake existential mid-life crisis. I really should take better care of myself. sigh.
Not that I don't want to be social... but I don't feel like starting things, although I somehow find myself in a position of doing so sometimes anyway. I have a housewarming coming up this weekend and I'm somewhat dreading whatever I've gotten myself into because I have no idea what to expect of it. I haven't really planned it out that much yet.
Some friends lately have called me a "social butterfly" or whatever because it seems like I'm out and about all the time... but to be honest, I don't really feel it at all. Maybe I do a good job of putting events on my schedule together so it seems like I'm always busy and not available, but as it went with my last busy weekend, at every event I show up to with more than maybe 3 or 4 people, I generally end up feeling out of place or just there, which probably shows itself most by my tendency to be quiet and just sit there and space out while everyone else is talking. It makes me wonder at those times why I'm really there to begin with, other than maybe "keeping up the appearance" of being around people. I even distinctly recall an (inebriated) person I was walking home once from an event tell me, "I was surprised to see you here... You're a pretty quiet person." Which lends itself into why I don't consistently hang out with most people on a regular basis... and why everyone seems find me busy all the time.
[On a random note, Ryan mentioned recently that when we first started going to class together... a semester after meeting, I didn't really say anything until he mentioned Smash Bros once. Funny how circumstances change like that. If anything, my experiences pretty much tell me that I take a long time to befriend most people after meeting them.]
It astounds me how I am capable of interacting with people sometimes. The conversations I have often tend to feel out of sync with whatever is going on in my head at the moment or in general, although parts of it will come out in gushes, like if the game I'm preoccupied with happens to come up. (I'm still on a game binge by the way.) But really, I've sat in front of a mirror before and wondered if the person I can see is the same person everyone else sees when they interact with me. It's like I'm just doing a decent job of putting up a facade for communicating with people somehow, when inside I have something else completely different on my mind, and at that moment I just want to be left to my own devices, which is generally what happens at work for me anyway. I usually have this filter on that blocks out most of what's been going on in my head when I talk to people, or else I imagine I'd be a lot more melodramatic and emotional all the time. I've actually contemplated making a private twitter to document the random tangential thoughts that enter my head sometimes... but there's a reason why I don't reveal these things to people.
All that said, I don't hate interacting with people - I actually enjoy listening to others a lot - I just find it tiring to keep up with everyone. Which is why I guess the relationships that have flourished the most for me are the ones that don't require the upkeep of having to talk everyday or even that often, the ones that don't have me worrying if they're still there or not just because we haven't hung out in a while (and oftentimes I feel like I have to be the one to initiate anyway). I appreciate being able to enjoy a good day with someone even if we haven't talked for months or years - and in fact it's starting to feel more normal for me now. (I'm probably repeating myself here.)
On another note, there's a lot going on in our heads during social interaction that we take for granted. About a year ago I was sitting in on a group session for high schoolers with disorders on the autism spectrum (long story) and a lot of the topics covered by the teacher felt somewhere between juvenile and common knowledge, when in reality for those students it really wasn't. Cues that most of us somehow manage to pick up through interactions and experiences had to be taught to these kids, made explicit for them by adults. And some of them were the victims of bullying and in one case was moving schools all the time for all the trouble he kept getting into... for not responding well to bullying. I have to admit, if I were in that situation I wouldn't know what to do either.
Looking at it all, it reminded me of experiences I'd almost forgotten from a long time ago, back when I was still in middle school and wasn't really friends with anyone in my class. I don't remember why, but when I was younger I'd already developed a habit of watching other kids play on the playground, but not really joining in with them on anything... or perhaps I did a few times, but I don't remember much of it. After a while I'd developed a habit of living in my own world at recess, playing on the playground by myself while make believing stuff like a scenario where all of the buildings and cars near me were boats traveling in parallel on a huge river, somewhere, while mostly ignoring whatever else was going on at recess. Come to think of it, there were a few people I did interact with early on, but all of them wound up moving to different schools at some point or were in the younger grades, and those relationships didn't keep for long.
This kept on until my teacher at the time noted my lack of social activity at recess/lunch to my parents at a parent-teacher conference, and then the next thing I knew we had assigned tables per grade at lunch, and then somehow I made friends with the people in my class who sat at the same table as me... who I vaguely recalled choosing to sit with in the first place because I found them least cumbersome to deal with... I don't know what was going on in my head at the time. There was one time one of them even told me to go away, which really upset me and I think I was almost ready to give up on having friends, but somehow we wound up being good friends a year later due to random circumstances and luck I guess, and I don't think that person would remember this anyway. Well, kids tend to be pretty fickle at that age in general.
The point of that all being, being social is a lot harder (for some of us at least) than we generally give it credit for. And I even have a tendency to prefer to distance myself away from people who aren't that social or seem uncomfortable to be around, despite the fact that those people are as in much need of community and friendship as anyone else and oftentimes have a lot of insight into things that the rest of us don't really notice in life. I keep having to remind myself that every time I find myself in social situations, both where I'm the one with the privilege of extending a hand out to people and where I'm the one who feels excluded or left out. Even when it turns out that there's isn't an easy way to integrate some people with a community, because they don't happen to fit in for some reason like they make others uncomfortable, and it isn't usually clear how exactly one can fix this issue.
And the advent of instant messaging and texting and facebook and all of that just makes this even more complicated. Most of the time I don't give it as much thought or worry like I used to when I was younger and suffered from instant messaging anxiety, but I still feel uncomfortable sometimes when people don't respond in a timely fashion (or just ever) due to the lack of cues in these forms of communication that would be accessible in physical interaction. Not that physical interaction is that much better, though... I guess I can still be oblivious to when people actually don't really like me, for one thing. I'm assuming there are people out there who still don't based off of past history, but whatever... It's not like that knowledge would change much, and you can't please everyone anyway.
I still have moments every week where I just feel like cutting off contact with everyone and keeping to myself, because it's easier that way than having to deal with the anxiety and the unnecessary worrying I often exhibit when it comes to the prospect of keeping up with people and not knowing what to do in social situations I'm not comfortable with, as they happen all the time. But I have to remind myself that these ties and relationships are worth it in the long run, because they're part of what makes this life worth living.
Now excuse me while I go off and be anti-social for a while thanks to my sickness. I think I ate some bad leftovers yesterday and I've been feeling queasy all day... and couldn't sleep last night due to a combination of sleeping early and waking up in the middle of the night and being too awake to fall asleep + it being too hot + random joint and back aches + migraine level headaches from getting too little sleep and then napping too much + my mind being unstable in such conditions and experiencing a half-awake existential mid-life crisis. I really should take better care of myself. sigh.
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