Does my boyfriend count as a friend? No? Well, in that case, I have none

Once again, I like making fun of myself. Funny story: today in poetry my professor was demanding that we go to this reading tonight. As were were packing up our stuff, he gave me a flyer and said "here, invite all your friends."

"Do you mean FRIEND?" I replied. I was laughing at myself and laughing at the fact that out of the entire six people in attendance today, he chose me to present with this task.

"You only have one friend?" he said.

"Uh, yeah...."

At this point the remaining people in the class were laughing. I have been making people laugh a lot more lately, especially in my classes. Have I become somewhat of a class clown? Is that what I have resorted to?

He handed me the flyer anyway and said "then, bring your friend tonight. We need all the people we can get to come."

I walked out with my two acquaintances for the class - I would call them friends, but then I have to ask myself what consists of a friend? I have never hung out with these people outside of class, we don't hold conversations other than the ones right before and right after class. Yes, I would call them friends, but I think the more appropriate term is acquaintance.



Yesterday, I had a very lovely time at a banquet. I realized, however, that I'm not very good at eating while taking part in a conversation - eating, for me is a priority, you know. I absolutely love to eat and am absolutely surprised that I do not weigh 200 pounds!

I probably should have made more of an effort to speak, but I can only call myself a woman of few words. The good thing about that philosophy is that usually in settings like that, when I speak, people listen.

Le sigh. I'm sooooo swamped with school work for the next three weeks. AND I have a group project which is going surprisingly well. My group members and I have become really comfortable around each other and are having fun with the project.

I guess that's all for now. I'll work hard tomorrow to be more social - if not that, then at least to write a more compelling blog post.

Perfecting the Chit-Chat

I'm probably not the only one out there who thinks chit-chats are not very authentic. Walking past someone, hoping-to-god they don't see you, then locking eyes with them, smiling a fake smile, and saying "Hey, how are you?" while quickly speeding up your pace, not expecting a response, not quite responding to their response, grunting and smiling while saying "see ya around," is not a great way to really, truly start up a conversation with a friend OR an acquaintence.

Instead of doing what I normally do in those situations, I tried a new approach - I wouldn't call this the more normal approach, but maybe the old-fashioned one. Today, with so many people on the go or with their eyes locked onto their cell phones, it's hard to strike up a conversation but I did it anyway. I DID IT!

In the break room at work, I went to get a cup of water. This girl I used to work with at the newspaper was sitting there, as she usually does, reading or writing or something I didn't pay particular attention to. I said "Hey ____, Have you talked to ____?" Then I got the blank stare.
"About her internship, you mean?"
"No, about the magazine article she is writing..." I said (surely with some weird-ass look on my face).
"OH!!! Yeah!!!..."

And then we proceeded to converse about things girls who don't really know each other on a personal level converse about. Having another acquaintance in common helped, even though to be completely honest, I don't really know the girl who I mentioned. Usually, I would have just walked in, poured some water into my bottle and left without even making any eye contact. YAY ME!!

Then, later at our workshop, one of my supervisors said "how many of you are graduating this year?" And I raised my enthusiastic hand high. Instead of just smiling and half-raising my hand, I spoke like a true extrovert! "I got my cap and gown today!"

And that struck up a conversation amongst us graduating people!! Awwww community!

I know this all seems really miniscule but in the past, I would avoid situations where I would have to talk to people I didn't know under the assumption that I wouldn't like them. But really why do I do this? Because I'm afraid of being rejected? God knows I'm not shy.... I used to be, but now I embarrass myself so much, the shy sort of slipped right off me.

I'm trying. Someday, I will perfect the chit-chat...

I'm clever , smart, and cool - You just don't know it yet.

My first post.... ...

I guess we can call this an experiment. Instead of criticizing people for blogging or for updating their Facebook every couple minutes or for Tweeting about the mundane melancholies of their life, I should bite my tongue and try it out.

Here is the thing: A couple days ago in my Doing Ethnography class, a guy said that people who once felt they weren't a part of a community could now feel welcome in cyberspace whether through YouTube vlogs or My Space. I took his statement with a grain of salt. This was probably because I don't know him, probably because I thought of him at that moment as just any other stupid college guy I go to school with.

Then I got to thinking.... who am I to judge him? Maybe this guy is on to something. Maybe he knows a secret that I'm not yet aware of.

And to clarify about the friends, (sure, this is going to sound like I'm in denial, but) I do have friends. Check my Facebook profile and you'll see I have like 600 hundred friends, BUT why do I feel like I don't have anything to say to any one of them??? I don't do status updates because why should they care? And I sometimes read their stati, but then I get annoyed and just decide to leave FB alone for a few days.

Now, this is my attempt to see if I can find myself a new community, one that doesn't brag about their feigned-perfect lives, but one that is full of people I would consider friends and want to someday meet in "real life."

I heard about this site called 20-Something bloggers... I'm going to "apply" or whatever it's called and see what happens. Maybe, I'll finally have someone to talk to other than my boyfriend (who I'm sure sometimes gets tired of my bitching). We live together, by the way, and do absolutely everything together. This may also be a reason why I don't hang around with people, but then at the same time, I just don't see anyone here (in Lubbock, TX) as really worthy of my time.

So, here are the parameters I promise to uphold for this blog:
1. Write everyday.
2. Try not to bitch as much and be thankful for the things I have.
3. Try to "put myself out there" in my day-to-day (as in, introduce myself to someone new and quit being so anti-social)
4. Treat all of this optimistically and hopeful that this experiment will help me find at least some people I can relate to.

Buena Suerte.