Ramblings, continued.

2002-07-07 - 10:35 p.m.

I'm just gonna scribble off a quick entry, since I want to walk to work tonight.

I was just thinking about how most of you folks don't even know me. There's one reader (Blind Merv) who's known me for years, and the rest are either co-workers, so have known me just over a year, or are complete strangers, except for what we choose to write in our diaries.

It's created a weird sort of haphazard community, and it has me confused as to why, out of all the diaries out there, we've ended up reading each others'.

I'm expecting that most of you either do what I did, which was got really bored (or drunk) one night and just started looking at random diaries, either through the "just updated" list, or through one of the favourite movies/books/bands lists...which, really, is a pretty inefficient way to try to meet people. I mean, aside from liking Stephen King, there's likely nothing else we have in common. And I'm -so- over talking about Stephen King.

It's like with my psuedo-friend from the protests...we were only there because of a common interest, and only started talking because some other guy decided to talk with us, and then we kinda just hung out together because we didn't know anyone else.

At least twice, he brushed me off because he saw a friend, and I brushed him off a couple of times because I wanted to read instead of see the art museum or whatever. Both marches we intended to march together, and both times at the very beginning we got seperated and didn't meet up until the end, at which point it almost seemed like we had to start all over again with each other.

On the bus we got to talk a while, but again, it seemed more like we were just talking because we had no one else to talk with. We would hit on a subject that we'd talk about, but then, just before we really clicked, something would be knocked out of alignment and we'd be back to awkwardness again.

There's been that sense of awkwardness a lot lately, and I really don't like it. Everyone in my life is there because of one common interest, or a common fact of life. I miss the friendships where we clicked, if not right away, then eventually, and where we had a lot of things in common, and a lot of those things mattered. I still remember how Blind Merv and I met, through grade ten English, where we didn't really think we had anything in common, but when the creepy teacher with the suspected toupee forced us to be a part of the same group, we suddenly had a lot to talk about.

Another friend I met simply because he started working at the store I worked at, and I suspected he was gay. So one night I walked with him to the bus stop, and started throwing casual references to gay movies, gay books, gay magazines around. He didn't bite once, and it turns out he's straight (though people -still- think he's gay) but we both liked the Simpsons, drinking to excess, and had a weird sense of humour.

It feels like that clicking just doesn't happen anymore, and I'm wondering if it's me. I mean, other folks meet new friends every day, so it's unlikely there's been a sudden shift in the dynamics of human interaction, right?

Anyway, I started this entry off thinking about community, and I'm just realising that I don't seem to have one. I keep saying it's a temporary situation, and that soon I'll have so many friends I won't know what to do with myself, but it kinda doesn't help.

So, off to work, where I'll at least be alone for five hours, and it won't matter if I'm clicking or not, because at least the poinsetta likes me.

Cheers,

The Magus

previous - next