bagheera_san (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bagheera_san) wrote2006-06-19 11:52 pm
bagheera_san) wrote2006-06-19 11:52 pm
Socialising habits
I've been part of a weekly pen&paper roleplaying group (à la D&D) for a little more than a year now, and generally, it's been really great. We're 4-5 guys and 2 girls and these are more or less the only people I'm meeting regularly since my best friend is still in Australia and most other people from school have moved away to study elsewhere or just generally dropped off the radar - and I've never been a very social person to begin with. Or maybe you should say, social in strange ways...
I've been operating in a "one very, very close best friend and several loose other friends" kind of social circle since kindergarten. The best friend has, with short exceptions, always been a girl, but except for my early teenager years, I've always been able to get along well with boys and in fact I'm kinda boyish myself in some ways.
In secondary school (German gymnasium, roughly equal to highschool and maybe the first two years of college), we had a clique of girly girls (I often didn't get along with them too well) that devolved to a trio and then to just me and my best friend. I've known her since before kindergarten, although not always as well as later on. By now I'd say we're almost as close as sisters (let's see how things are when she returns from Australia. I really hope we'll still get along as well.)
So for years during my formative phase (from about 13 to 17/18) I had no social circle to speak of, just her. We were kind of isolated in our class and my social skills degenerated a lot. I used to be a brash, almost rude and rather extroverted girl, but I became an introverted loner who had to put huge effort into simple things like small talk and little conversation. There were times when it was a big, big success when I exchanged two words with another person in my class that wasn't my best friend.
Then, in the last two years of Gymnasium, classes are split up into courses as people can specialise in certain subjects and you get to meet a wholly new group of people. Suddenly I met a lot of people I got along with, other geeks and people with similarly non-mainstream tendencies but also political activists and just normal people. My social circle practically exploded. I had my first boyfriend for a very short time. I was invited to my first real party. At the same time I was still successful at school. These two years were maybe the happiest in my life so far. It's because of that that I miss school so much now and can't quite get my life on.
The thing is, I realised that socialising works fine for me, as long as it's with the right kind of people. People whose social skills or accomplishments don't intimidate me, people who don't make me feel completely dorky and incompetent. I'm not shy, I just have little common ground with most people of my age group.
I'm still spending way too much time in front on my desk at home, or in escapist fantasies, I'm still a big loner, but I'm *fine* that way. I don't feel like I'm missing out on things, because everytime I do something with people, everytime I talk and laugh and play and party with them, it feels like a new, raw, fascinating experience. It's that first-kiss-feeling, that 'I can't believe this is really happening to *me*' feeling. It's one of the few big pleasures I get out of life, to live it consciously, and with wonder.
I hope it'll be like this for a long time.
(Huh. That wasn't actually supposed to be such a positive post... *mood swing* :D)
This is vaguely drunk-postey. ;D
I've been operating in a "one very, very close best friend and several loose other friends" kind of social circle since kindergarten. The best friend has, with short exceptions, always been a girl, but except for my early teenager years, I've always been able to get along well with boys and in fact I'm kinda boyish myself in some ways.
In secondary school (German gymnasium, roughly equal to highschool and maybe the first two years of college), we had a clique of girly girls (I often didn't get along with them too well) that devolved to a trio and then to just me and my best friend. I've known her since before kindergarten, although not always as well as later on. By now I'd say we're almost as close as sisters (let's see how things are when she returns from Australia. I really hope we'll still get along as well.)
So for years during my formative phase (from about 13 to 17/18) I had no social circle to speak of, just her. We were kind of isolated in our class and my social skills degenerated a lot. I used to be a brash, almost rude and rather extroverted girl, but I became an introverted loner who had to put huge effort into simple things like small talk and little conversation. There were times when it was a big, big success when I exchanged two words with another person in my class that wasn't my best friend.
Then, in the last two years of Gymnasium, classes are split up into courses as people can specialise in certain subjects and you get to meet a wholly new group of people. Suddenly I met a lot of people I got along with, other geeks and people with similarly non-mainstream tendencies but also political activists and just normal people. My social circle practically exploded. I had my first boyfriend for a very short time. I was invited to my first real party. At the same time I was still successful at school. These two years were maybe the happiest in my life so far. It's because of that that I miss school so much now and can't quite get my life on.
The thing is, I realised that socialising works fine for me, as long as it's with the right kind of people. People whose social skills or accomplishments don't intimidate me, people who don't make me feel completely dorky and incompetent. I'm not shy, I just have little common ground with most people of my age group.
I'm still spending way too much time in front on my desk at home, or in escapist fantasies, I'm still a big loner, but I'm *fine* that way. I don't feel like I'm missing out on things, because everytime I do something with people, everytime I talk and laugh and play and party with them, it feels like a new, raw, fascinating experience. It's that first-kiss-feeling, that 'I can't believe this is really happening to *me*' feeling. It's one of the few big pleasures I get out of life, to live it consciously, and with wonder.
I hope it'll be like this for a long time.
(Huh. That wasn't actually supposed to be such a positive post... *mood swing* :D)
This is vaguely drunk-postey. ;D