I’ve been struggling with the social world that is around me for the past few months. It’s been the source of much stress and so on. This weekend and today ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. The ways I interact with my friends and how they interact with me, I’m now finding, to be very unhealthy.
Our lives are all buzzing by faster then we ever could have imagined and only rarely do we want it to slow down. Is there a way around this? What steps can one take to still enjoy the thrill of leading an intense life without regretting later on that they left their friends in the dust?
Saturday eve, (drunkenly) stumbling up my stairs into my flat, I composed an outline of limitation I want to impose on myself that involve my social interactions with others. The goal here is to see if this style of functioning will make me (and my friends) feel better about their relations to each other, possibly make them be more fuller and present.
The simple items…
- Slowly quitting Twitter, going to only read/post from my Hiptop (i.e. when I’m mobile). Taking Twitterific off my machine and possibly blocking twitter.com on my laptop. Why? Because Twitter makes me too connected, I accept this sort of 140 character connection as being a replacement to something more. All and all, knowing about everything my friends do all the time, in very short and non desrcript ways is making me feel like I know them less.
- Start posting in my journal more. Lay out my thoughts, create a log of what I’m doing, using that to reflect on when figuring out what I want to do in the upcoming future. As I’ve told some very very close friends over dinner and through the air waves tonight, “Our lives are boats floating in a vast ocean, and journals are our sails that cary us through.”
- Take more photos. I might start a new 365 project, I don’t know, but it fucking needs to happen.
Rather harder rules…
- Actively push to hang out with my friends. Be weary of those who find it an annoyance when I push for a set time and date. Being friends means making time for those around you.
- Be present for my friends, give them my full attention, try to make a solid connection each time interaction happens. Seek these interactions out, they mean so much more then just simply running into someone.
- Social interactions are 3 friends max at any one point in time. Any more and I politely leave. Why? Parties are a garbage way of interacting with your friends. You cannot be present with them when you’re thrown into a barrel of alcohol, music and random people you may or may not find interesting. It’s getting to a point where some of my friends see these interactions as being a suitable fill in to actually hanging out one on one, eventually seeing parties as an easy way to hang out with others over setting time aside for one on one interactions. I.e. killing two birds with one stone doesn’t work here.
- Limit interaction and dialog over AIM. Simple but very oh so fucking hard.
If I even care about this list tomorrow is a rather big question. As many know, I’m very much a social bug. Regardless, I need to get ahold of my head before I actually do lose it. If you’re still reading this, please take note of the 5th bullet point. If I end up leaving because you show up, do not take is personally. Very much a “it’s me, not you” sort of deal.
Extremely lovely photo by Mooflyfoof.
