[brains] seasons, people, interactions
Feb. 4th, 2005 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wispfoxYou know what annoys me about this time of year?
I'm _way_ less good at keeping in touch with people, which exacerbates the feelings I sometimes have about seeming fickle, _and_ makes it much more difficult and effortful for me to reinsert myself into my larger social world when the winter ends.
Every year, I wonder whether it's even worth it for me to try to reinsert myself once I have the energy again. This is especially true now that people _do_ ping me for hanging out without me having to poke them, because this means that - unlike previous winters - I have more connections continuing through the winter, even if in a lessened form. So I have less of a pull toward strengthening ones that faded, or toward making new ones. (not, mind, that I am saying that I am actively avoiding making new ones. Not at all! Does mean I have less time and/or energy for new people, so they have to be pretty high on my interest scale for me to actively pursue them, though. Which I guess is good, since it means that I will continue to refine the people who I have around me toward those I prefer more strongly, simply due to time and energy limitations)
This is probably part of why my social groups (both off and online) tend to change a fair amount every year. Partly the fact that there seems to always be different people for me to meet/interact with (with a subset of them being sufficiently interesting to me to want to investigate further), but partly because reconnecting with people I lose connection with, especially if the reason was an (apparently?) insufficiently strong level of interest, is often just way too much effort. Especially if they are not appearing to care enough on their end. However, I can think of no case where, if I lose touch with someone purely due to lack of sufficiently high levels of apparent interest (and therefore interaction), I would _not_ be interested in being back in touch. (This is, BTW, entirely different a set of circumstances than the times where I decide that someone is just someone I work better with by running into them at parties and such, or something along these lines)
I think the vast majority of the reason I'm so fascinated by this particular topic right now is that, until I became at least somewhat a part of various Boston area groups[1], there were just not enough people I _wanted_ to be around, let alone people I strongly wanted to be around. So I wasn't as careful about my time and energy selections, and perhaps this is why I tend to have so very few friends from more than a few years ago (people I call friends who I've known for longer than I've been in the Boston crowds can be counted on one hand)[5]. LJ also seems to affect this, in that it appears to be a stronger form of the social interaction I was already doing online, and a fairly decent filter for finding people I will actively be interested in meeting and hanging out with when it works out that way (with, of course, some variation).
[1] 'Somewhat' because I don't tend to feel a part of any groups. The only group that I can come up with that I _do_ feel a part of is rather... specific to myself. It contains the people with whom I have a strong enough pull, and sufficient levels of comfort[2], that I actively seek them out. Otherwise known as 'the people I call friends'. Which, well, _duh_, I'd feel a part of that group! (and no, I have no idea what decides the sufficient pull aspect)
[2] This means that I can read their body language with sufficient ease, or I am willing to not worry about reading their body language (the latter is rare!). It means I have reason to expect that confusing-to-me[3] behavior will be the exception, and not the norm. Probably other things, too. And this is _after_ the filtering type things I mention in my user info, because those appear to determine if I am likely to even notice a person.
[3] Confusing-to-me behavior is also, generally, scary-to-me behavior. This worsens the more often it happens, because if I cannot have at least some base level of 'what I can expect from someone', I cannot feel safe around them. This is going to be the most common reason that I back off from people that I initially had interest in, although I do tend to try to put effort into figuring out what's going on, first, as well as _saying_ something before I back off from someone if there was enough time spent that they are going to be hurt by unexplained backing off. This is also, in my own shorthand, described as 'craziness which is incompatible with my own craziness', or even more briefly, 'too crazy for me'. I'm getting better at detecting this _before_ I get close enough to a person that me backing off is going to hurt them, and it's mostly (although not entirely) unconscious 'this person makes me uncomfortable' at this point.
This was actually a fairly recent (started becoming fully conscious of it and trying to make it a part of me about 2-3 years ago?) change in my mental process, partly because I didn't previously always trust my sense of people as far as this kind of thing goes, partly because I felt bad about not being able to give a reason why some people - nifty and neat though they be - were not people I could cope with[4], and partly because, in some cases, I thought I could handle it and/or help with it.
[4] This is actually what most often tends to make me feel fickle. It _is_ a recent change, and it _is_ still something I'm implementing.
Edit: [5] This is _NOT_ intended to be saying anything bad about the people who I have called friends in the past and no longer do. In most cases, they just tended to not be sufficiently strong pulls for me (and apparently the same in reverse for them) to keep in sufficient contact.
I'm _way_ less good at keeping in touch with people, which exacerbates the feelings I sometimes have about seeming fickle, _and_ makes it much more difficult and effortful for me to reinsert myself into my larger social world when the winter ends.
Every year, I wonder whether it's even worth it for me to try to reinsert myself once I have the energy again. This is especially true now that people _do_ ping me for hanging out without me having to poke them, because this means that - unlike previous winters - I have more connections continuing through the winter, even if in a lessened form. So I have less of a pull toward strengthening ones that faded, or toward making new ones. (not, mind, that I am saying that I am actively avoiding making new ones. Not at all! Does mean I have less time and/or energy for new people, so they have to be pretty high on my interest scale for me to actively pursue them, though. Which I guess is good, since it means that I will continue to refine the people who I have around me toward those I prefer more strongly, simply due to time and energy limitations)
This is probably part of why my social groups (both off and online) tend to change a fair amount every year. Partly the fact that there seems to always be different people for me to meet/interact with (with a subset of them being sufficiently interesting to me to want to investigate further), but partly because reconnecting with people I lose connection with, especially if the reason was an (apparently?) insufficiently strong level of interest, is often just way too much effort. Especially if they are not appearing to care enough on their end. However, I can think of no case where, if I lose touch with someone purely due to lack of sufficiently high levels of apparent interest (and therefore interaction), I would _not_ be interested in being back in touch. (This is, BTW, entirely different a set of circumstances than the times where I decide that someone is just someone I work better with by running into them at parties and such, or something along these lines)
I think the vast majority of the reason I'm so fascinated by this particular topic right now is that, until I became at least somewhat a part of various Boston area groups[1], there were just not enough people I _wanted_ to be around, let alone people I strongly wanted to be around. So I wasn't as careful about my time and energy selections, and perhaps this is why I tend to have so very few friends from more than a few years ago (people I call friends who I've known for longer than I've been in the Boston crowds can be counted on one hand)[5]. LJ also seems to affect this, in that it appears to be a stronger form of the social interaction I was already doing online, and a fairly decent filter for finding people I will actively be interested in meeting and hanging out with when it works out that way (with, of course, some variation).
[1] 'Somewhat' because I don't tend to feel a part of any groups. The only group that I can come up with that I _do_ feel a part of is rather... specific to myself. It contains the people with whom I have a strong enough pull, and sufficient levels of comfort[2], that I actively seek them out. Otherwise known as 'the people I call friends'. Which, well, _duh_, I'd feel a part of that group! (and no, I have no idea what decides the sufficient pull aspect)
[2] This means that I can read their body language with sufficient ease, or I am willing to not worry about reading their body language (the latter is rare!). It means I have reason to expect that confusing-to-me[3] behavior will be the exception, and not the norm. Probably other things, too. And this is _after_ the filtering type things I mention in my user info, because those appear to determine if I am likely to even notice a person.
[3] Confusing-to-me behavior is also, generally, scary-to-me behavior. This worsens the more often it happens, because if I cannot have at least some base level of 'what I can expect from someone', I cannot feel safe around them. This is going to be the most common reason that I back off from people that I initially had interest in, although I do tend to try to put effort into figuring out what's going on, first, as well as _saying_ something before I back off from someone if there was enough time spent that they are going to be hurt by unexplained backing off. This is also, in my own shorthand, described as 'craziness which is incompatible with my own craziness', or even more briefly, 'too crazy for me'. I'm getting better at detecting this _before_ I get close enough to a person that me backing off is going to hurt them, and it's mostly (although not entirely) unconscious 'this person makes me uncomfortable' at this point.
This was actually a fairly recent (started becoming fully conscious of it and trying to make it a part of me about 2-3 years ago?) change in my mental process, partly because I didn't previously always trust my sense of people as far as this kind of thing goes, partly because I felt bad about not being able to give a reason why some people - nifty and neat though they be - were not people I could cope with[4], and partly because, in some cases, I thought I could handle it and/or help with it.
[4] This is actually what most often tends to make me feel fickle. It _is_ a recent change, and it _is_ still something I'm implementing.
Edit: [5] This is _NOT_ intended to be saying anything bad about the people who I have called friends in the past and no longer do. In most cases, they just tended to not be sufficiently strong pulls for me (and apparently the same in reverse for them) to keep in sufficient contact.
