River: social life

[mdlbear]

A somewhat delayed insight from a comment Naomi made to me in IM when I told her that I didn't have a social life in high school: all this time I've been defining "social life" in a way that focussed on dating and other activities where the point was to have or find a romantic partner.

I've also been very shy, for as long as I can remember, so of course I didn't have one, by that definition. I did have some fairly close (male) friends. But that didn't count, by that definition.

Even now, what I've been calling my "social life" (what there is of it) consists mostly of the handful of parties I go to, and things I do with Colleen. I don't think of conventions, late-night conversations, song-swapping sessions and filk circles as part of a "social life".

Silly old Bear.

Fortunately, my background in science and software makes me familiar with the idea that changing the way you describe a problem can drastically simplify it or even make it go away. It's never too late for a paradigm shift.

Not that knowing that I had a social life after all would have helped me get dates...

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Could just mean that you're more decisive/organized than most. I tend to invite more than I get invited, partly because people are -- sometimes accurately -- afraid that I won't have the physical energy to come to their places, but partly because I can get my act together to decide who I want to invite, when, and for what, and go make it happen, and a lot of people just sort of sit there vaguely thinking it'd be nice if they had more people over sometime.