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Please let me vent...
Here we are on Saturday night and I've got nobody to hang out with. Now, I can't complain about lack of opportunities; I went to a big party at a bar on Thursday and a smaller party at a different pub last night. I had a decent time at both of them. The first generated an invite to a Thanksgiving dinner which I am happy to accept, and the latter involved a long chat with a perfectly nice young woman who said she'd become my facebook friend (sadly, hasn't happened yet). So, actually, this has been one of the best weekends for socializing I've had in quite some time.
However, an IM chat with a good friend of mine who is now overseas made me rethink why exactly I'm feeling so left out these days. I sort of figured that as long as I was getting out of the house I was making progress in developing a social life (I'm in grad school for my second year in Boston). However, I keep meeting all new people and I rarely see the same person twice. As my friend put it, I can't just relax and cut loose these days. Back in college, I had a bunch of really good friends around whom I could be completely at ease. Unwind. Relax. I could do dumb things and not worry about being judged. I could just buzz them, go into their rooms and be guaranteed a nice welcome and good conversation (among other fun hang-out times). These days it feels like people are just distant and I'm always making a first impression.
I don't know... maybe grad school is just not the place to develop lifelong bonds. However, whenever I meet people and we say we'll get together some other time, it never happens. People are always too busy, or have out of town visitors or whatever. As a result, every time I go out I'm essentially on alien ground, y'know? Gone are the days that I could walk over at 1am on a Tuesday and shoot the breeze about whatever with people I knew really well. I miss that a lot and I don't know how to make those kind of connections here in the "real world" where I'm not in continuous contact with the same people every day.
I can't complain too much of course. I'm not a total loser. In fact, I have my share of great friends and a lot of good ones. When I spend enough time with people it seems like a fair amount of them develop the opinion that I'm a cool guy and a good friend. For instance, I went on a 6-week study abroad trip with 30 people a couple years ago. Within one week of seeing each other every day I was on excellent terms with at least 20 of them and some of us have remained close friends to this day. But now that kind of sustained contact is just impossible. I don't have any roommates (thankfully), and my classmates at school are only together with me for a couple hours per week.
Blargh. I don't know where I'm really going with this. I guess I just wish I could be where my friends already are. Even more I wish they would all just move to where I am, but I guess I can't be that self-centered :) But what really worries me, I guess, is that after a whole year out here I haven't figured out how to get people to make time to hang out and get to know me. If I could do that I feel like I'd be much better off. Any suggestions?
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