Losing Myself

(Image from http://www.friendsacrossamerica.com/)

Sometimes - especially around the holidays - I pause to wonder whether I'm losing myself. While most people enjoy some family time (or at least most people my age), I mostly dread it and now, more than ever, I find myself pulled in every direction. I spend so much time trying to fix things and make things better for everyone in my family AND trying to finish up the semester and do everything for my boss(es) and for group projects that I sometimes wonder what I'm supposed to be doing or what I would really like to do - not just what everyone expects me to do.

Maybe the rest of the world doesn't experience this or lose themselves quite like I have a tendency to, and as I get older I suppose I'm more aware of this and more apt to remind myself that it's okay to think about myself. I guess I just thought about it a lot today as I realized I had a lot of work to do before Monday - including a final exam Monday night (but seriously, who does that?!) - and I'm exhausted, but haven't even gotten much of "my" work done. Instead of helped do house repairs and keep the parents updated while they've been in another hemisphere, I've shopped for presents and groceries, stocked the fridge and the pantry, loaned out my car and cleaned up a ton of stuff. It's tough and I have to drive back tomorrow and cram like nobody's business because I really don't know what's happening with that exam. But at least I'm going back to my own little sanctuary, with my dog and my own work and problems and issues to take care of... and if everything's not perfect here, well, I just have to let it go. Even if it feels a bit selfish.

Google Account Issues

I apologize for the extreme lack of posting recently... I've had major technological issues. Mainly logging out of my real-person, school/work Gmail account and into this one in order to post. But I finally got in... I've written some entries that I haven't posted and at some point, I'll try to get those up here. But does anyone know what the deal with Gmail is recently? We've had the two major Gmail crashes and then I've had lingering issues... anyone know what's up? (Beyond the "official statements" and promises that everything is back to normal...)

I continue to post to Tumblr and some on Twitter though...

Popular

"I’ll help you be popular! You’ll hang with the right cohorts. You’ll be good at sports, know the slang you’ve got to know. So let’s start, ‘cause you’ve got an awfully long way to go..." -"Popular" from "Wicked" (the musical)

I know I should be grateful that so many people want to be my friend and that several of them are willing to go pretty far to make it seem like we are truly BFFs (keyword being "seem"), but for now, it's very frustrating. Seriously, more than two weeks before school started, three people had asked to co-host a party with me! And I'm not a planner and usually these guys aren't! If an invite hadn't gone out (with the first person to pressure me to make a decision), I think there would be more offers. Like one from the person who threw a party with me last year at the beginning of the school year. My favorite part is of course that these people like to invite others and act like hosts, except for the part where they do any work other than sending out invites and taking credit. To be fair, it's all been at my apartment, so it would be somewhat awkward to do all that much more, though I certainly wouldn't stop them!

It's just that it seems really obvious that several people want to make statements to everyone else in the program, letting everyone know that I'm their closest friend, that we have a solid bond that cannot be broken by any future events. My parties aren't that much more fun than anything else, other people live in my apartment complex and could use the pool here... and this behavior happens with more than just activities and parties. There was the game that existed my first year of grad school where I always lost as people tried to prove they knew me the best - essentially sharing more and more of my secrets to prove they knew me better. That was a great time...

I know that they don't mean anything negative and I should feel flattered, but I just think that it's much more about the alignment or group of personality types in this program. Most of them are very, very dominant, sort of alpha-females. And I am not. I'm fine with someone else taking the lead, or even getting credit for my work (as long as it's not a paper I slaved over or something big). To me, it's almost never worth fighting about and I don't want to be the leader just to be the leader. I don't like decisions. And so it's sort of that all of these people are competing to get the one sort of "follower" on their teams, thus making them the dominating force. Maybe I'm overly cynical and maybe multiple people just feel close to me because I tend to hang out with anyone and everyone, rather than sticking to one group (and so multiple people legitimately feel like my best friend and closest ally), or maybe they all just want to get into this eclectic group and get to know everyone as well as I do. Or maybe I'm just fun to host parties with.

It's just that it's surprisingly lonely being this "popular" (if I can even call it that... I swear, it's just for lack of a better word, I'm not trying to sound like a spoiled brat and the idea that this could sound like that bothers me immensely, but I want to write more than I want to be frustrated with that). Ultimately, despite the number of people calling and emailing and texting and messaging me, when bad stuff happens and I need some real emotional support, I don't really feel all that comfortable calling any of them. I'll tell them later, when the emotion passes, but I just can't confide in any of them. At least not now and I don't even really know why....

Self-Regulation Versus Gossip?!

Earlier this summer I sort of decided that it took too much effort to self-regulate around friends and fellow grad students (mostly because I have to do that enough around professors, at work, with the family) and so I've just been saying what's on my mind for the most part. I like it. It's easier to breathe and function and deal with things, though I know I need to not say absolutely everything... but now I feel like I'm gossiping at times. Expressing dissatisfaction with others and how they might have treated me recently or weird news around the department. I think this problem may be exacerbated by the fact that I'm hanging out with lots of different people and so it's not just confiding in one person.

The problem isn't just that I bring up topics I know might be troublesome, but how do you answer point-blank questions about them? Where is the line between gossip and catharsis? When are you talking about your feelings to think through them and when are you just spreading the word? Is it okay if I don't take pleasure in it? And most importantly, how do I stop? (Because I feel like I only know afterwards when I get a feeling of regret or realize I shouldn't hvae said something AFTER I already said it, so I just want to stop rather than completely understand the line.)

Houseguests and Fish

"Houseguests -- like fish -- begin to smell after three days." -Benjamin Franklin

Franklin is not nearly recognized enough for his practical genius... just when you think you know all the ways the man is a genius, you discover a new maxim that strikes true in another way and realize he's the source of it.

But I have to keep this short, as I am currently writing in secret from my room, with houseguest in other room. Mostly sleeping. AGAIN. And snoring. VERY loudly. It was exhausting for her to sit on my couch literally the ENTIRE day (she did get up to the to the bathroom, but seriously, I brought her food, the phone, etc. because she didn't want to get up and I didn't want to fight) and thought that was fine - as she told at least 16 people that's what was happening while on the phone with them. And the rest of the time she was watching TV on her laptop with the volume all the way up.

She's leaving tomorrow. And if she doesn't choose to leave voluntarily (hopefully as soon as possible), I will remove her. Some people are fine as friends and then they turn into Godzilla on Vacay in your small apartment and you just can't seem to find your way out of the subway station into the light...

Sadly I'm excited to get her out and then get to clean up my apartment and buy more food because it's useless to try while she's still here. It scares me that I'm looking forward to cleaning and grocery shopping. Though today's highlight involved my car repair taking longer than expected resulting in a legitimate reason to read in the relative quiet of the autoshop waiting room (it's relative and not an oxymoron, I swear).

Difficult Friends

I like to think that this is a trait (or behavior, really) that happens to be particularly prevalent amongst a small group of very smart, very high-achieving people, but I'm not sure if it's true... but the trait is a sort of one-upping, frenemy-ish competition over everything. This behavior manifests itself when you tell your friend that you love summer break because you've already gotten to read five fun books this summer. And competitive friend (hereafter known as CF) tells you that she has already read seven books this summer. Or you tell CF that your mom is really sick and in the hospital again and it's just sort of tough on you. CF then tells you how her aunt is really sick again and it's just really terrible because this aunt has been sick again and she knows it's stressing out her dad. Or you tell CF that your grant proposal got approved. And CF tells you why her internship is so much better than working on a grant.

It's such a shitty thing to do and it's hard to deal with because I honestly don't know how to have this conversation. In my life right now, CF is a good friend and I know that she means well (at least most of the time) and I feel like there are ways that she understands me that others really don't - we have the parents with cancer connection (though her mom has been in remission for years now), but that's not exactly common. And it does mean something because she does understand some of the complex emotions I'm experiencing and the sort of carpe diem that seizes you. But at the same time, her behavior recently has been outrageous atrocious. And previously, when attempting to tell her something she's doing is frustrating me, she ends up telling me she forgives me. WTF?

I'm sure it's making it sound like she's not really a friend, but the truth is that life isn't that easy for her now and she has been there for me in the past and I know that I am asking a lot from her right now... or at least I'm less emotionally available to her than I might otherwise be. It's just such a frustrating situation because I don't know how to tell her that this competition thing isn't okay, that it's not appropriate. That when I'm sad and upset, those are my feelings and they are valid and legitimate if for no other reason than because they are my feelings. Telling me something worse isn't helpful. I know other people are in worse situations, but that doesn't fix my life. And the truth is that things have been stunningly difficult in the past couple of weeks. This isn't how most twentysomethings are living, I don't share the same concerns they do. In some ways, I honestly feel like I'm middle-aged and dealing with the transition from child to parent of my own parents.

But that's not really why I'm writing or what I'm feeling, I'm just experiencing the frustration of dealing with my own particular CF and not sure how to deal with this. How do you tell someone that a trait of hers pisses you off? Can it be changed? What's the optimal outcome you can hope for in a conversation? Can she still change? I think those are important questions that I need to evaluate here and in a similar situation with another acquaintance/colleague... basically, are we still young enough to be molded? Or is the unwaivering belief that one is always right the silver armor preventing the clay from changing shape?