What I don't understand is how people just make friends. I'm here at the AP reading for the third time, having gone in 2015 and 2016, taking 2017 off, and now being here again. I come because it's good money and I like getting away from home, but in all honesty, I can't stand it at all. The work part is fine, but the nights...
All the people here either know each other from coming for years or are super friendly like my first roommate who had a crowd of her very own like the night after she got here. That first time wasn't so bad since we got along really well and did stuff together (and I totally mean that in more ways than one) plus my oldest friend Danielle drove over to Kansas City from St. Louis and stayed for a few nights, but last time and this time...talk about the pits. Everyone hangs out, going down to social hour and having drinks and eating food, like there are swarms of people milling about, while I sit in my room or wander the city alone looking for solo things to do.
(Full disclosure: My roommate is a super nice woman who I've roomed with before and she invited me down for drinks tonight and a guy (a really cute one!) who I met during lunch today, who told me to flag him down if I saw him again, was standing outside of my hotel today when I was coming in, and he said hi to me (by name. Who remembers somebody's name?), and I know if I wanted to stop and talk to him I totally could have had something to do, but just the thought of stopping and talking to someone I don't know makes me feel slightly sick.)
It's not that I don't want friends; I just don't know how to make them (see full disclosure above). You guys already know how awkward I am, and I'm also super shy. Well, initially I am. When I first started working at Miramar High seventeen years ago, I used to sit by myself for lunch in planning. One of the teachers in my department, Patty, kept inviting me to sit on the other side of the desks with everyone else, and too uncomfortable to say yes, I kept saying no and eating alone until one day she brought everyone to me. She brought her food and whatever coworkers were there at the time, I don't remember who--Anne? Emily?--every day until it just became the norm, and we became super good friends and are still friends today. If it had been left up to me, I have no doubt at all that we probably never would have been anything more than neighbors in the 150 corridor, not because I didn't want to be her friend but because I have an almost crippling fear of approaching people I don't know which pretty much means that unless some people at one of the readings takes an interest in me the way that Patty did, every June from now until who knows when, I'll be spending a week almost entirely alone which is probably good practice for the rest of my life now that I think about it so maybe I should just be grateful for the drill.
All the people here either know each other from coming for years or are super friendly like my first roommate who had a crowd of her very own like the night after she got here. That first time wasn't so bad since we got along really well and did stuff together (and I totally mean that in more ways than one) plus my oldest friend Danielle drove over to Kansas City from St. Louis and stayed for a few nights, but last time and this time...talk about the pits. Everyone hangs out, going down to social hour and having drinks and eating food, like there are swarms of people milling about, while I sit in my room or wander the city alone looking for solo things to do.
(Full disclosure: My roommate is a super nice woman who I've roomed with before and she invited me down for drinks tonight and a guy (a really cute one!) who I met during lunch today, who told me to flag him down if I saw him again, was standing outside of my hotel today when I was coming in, and he said hi to me (by name. Who remembers somebody's name?), and I know if I wanted to stop and talk to him I totally could have had something to do, but just the thought of stopping and talking to someone I don't know makes me feel slightly sick.)
It's not that I don't want friends; I just don't know how to make them (see full disclosure above). You guys already know how awkward I am, and I'm also super shy. Well, initially I am. When I first started working at Miramar High seventeen years ago, I used to sit by myself for lunch in planning. One of the teachers in my department, Patty, kept inviting me to sit on the other side of the desks with everyone else, and too uncomfortable to say yes, I kept saying no and eating alone until one day she brought everyone to me. She brought her food and whatever coworkers were there at the time, I don't remember who--Anne? Emily?--every day until it just became the norm, and we became super good friends and are still friends today. If it had been left up to me, I have no doubt at all that we probably never would have been anything more than neighbors in the 150 corridor, not because I didn't want to be her friend but because I have an almost crippling fear of approaching people I don't know which pretty much means that unless some people at one of the readings takes an interest in me the way that Patty did, every June from now until who knows when, I'll be spending a week almost entirely alone which is probably good practice for the rest of my life now that I think about it so maybe I should just be grateful for the drill.
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