Being Me

As PC rather sarcastically reminded me, I don't exactly have trouble making friends. What I do have, and seem to forget, since so far it's only rolled around twice in six years, is general anxiety and self-doubt when making all new friends. That's probably not unique or interesting. When it happened in ATL I opined all sorts of things - I'm older, this class of individuals will grow up to be my professional colleagues and that's weird and stressful, etc. And here we are again. I've got a pretty good leg up here on the west coast - three truly wonderful friends from my past, a handful of acquaintances, and several introductions to new folks via old friends. I'm hardly starting from scratch. And yet, once again, here I find myself coming home from perfectly lovely evenings replaying conversations in my head, fretting over first impressions. This tracks with my general anxiety and stress levels, so of course, it ebbs and flows. And, my previous sample size of one tells me, eventually it will simply fade away. But in the meantime.

Which is why this evenings is noteworthy. Pizza and beer with old acquaintance turned new friend and no post-evening fretting. No replaying. And no, as my therapist used to call it, putting the lid on. I was me, full force, no filters, in all my space-occupying, voice-carrying, opinionated, nerdiness. And it was really, really fun. So that's my story.