What am I looking for?

[cjsmith]

What am I looking for in a friend or a group of friends / social circle?

I need to be visible. I do not ever again want to leave a group of friends and find out that they do not remember until I mention it that it's the last time I'm going to dance with them. I don't know what I do to be so invisible, but that's just pathetic. I will figure out my side of this dynamic and *fix it*. (This transition is going to be good for me in a lot of ways. Too bad I had to lose the feet to start looking at all this.)

I'd like someone to hang out with. People with whom I can be myself, and people who feel comfortable being themselves around me.

I'd like fun times. Laughter. Things to do, things to learn, things to talk about.

I'd like the opportunity to do nice things for others. I remember when I was having a crampy-doom day and wooddragon got me a chocolate muffin-cake-thing. She rocks. I remember crazyladynocats' cookies and rampling's cheese and indyansel's chocolate. Those were wonderful. Because I love it so much when people do stuff like that for me, I also want to be able to do things like that for them, too. (And no, it doesn't always have to be food. I sure do remember all the food, though, don't I? Heh!)

Ideally, for close friendships, I'd like someone who will call me -- gently -- on my shit, and who will challenge me to improve.

I might need to learn how to do my part to keep up friendships. I already know I don't reach out much. I will work on that. It may very well be that I don't pay attention in person. If so, I will fix it. That sort of thing.

What draws me to befriend someone online?

Intelligence, amusing or interesting things to say, humor, friendliness, at least something in common with me, supportiveness / caring, some level of self-awareness / taking responsibility for self, lack of need to put me down or order me around, ability to befriend me back even if we don't agree on everything.

Hi, everyone on my friendslist. Every one of you has some or all of this, at least in my eyes. :-)

What draws me to befriend someone in person?

Many of the same things, although they'll show up differently. We see each other on LJ through the written word, so people who are good at wordsmithing appear more intelligent. In person, spelling and grammar don't matter as much. Some people use LJ to vent and whine (I know I do) and thus may seem to be victims by temperament when they're less like that in person. Some people are very caring and supportive in LJ's many-separate-conversations environment, while others may not seem so because they're not necessarily sure what to type; but in person I perceive folks as supportive based on facial expresson and body language and whether they're willing to give me half the air time in a conversation.

Do I know anyone like this?

Hell yeah. Lots of 'em, and quite a few live within ten minutes of me. It's time for me to reach out to coworkers, regain contact with ex-coworkers, wave and smile at my neighbors, attend that block party. Time to show up at flying club activities; time to show up at W&S occasionally to get more face time with my LJ-friends farther away. Time to decide what my new big hobby will be (that'll take a while). And if I feel myself slipping into invisibility, maybe I'll urge all these people to get LJ accounts! :-)

Comments

[airporter.livejournal.com]

willing to give me half the air time in a conversation

I'm getting better at this, so how about it? Granted, I still have to have the last word. You'd noticed? *grin*

I admit to being a bit shy in the face of someone new, who seemed to be so all together. I do wish I'd gotten it together to say hi! in July; knowing you on LJ is cool, but I do want to deliver these hugs.

Your hug pile's gotten kind of, um, large.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I think I share the traits you listed for what draws you to befriend, in both circumstances. Some of them are probably pretty global, actually.

While I wish I wasn't so invisible at times, I do value some invisibility time, and I don't necessarily want a larger group of friends, just ones that aren't so transient, which it seems my local friends continue to be. I can wish all day that my closer online friends were physically closer, so I just need to accept that to maintain those is going to take occassional visits, hopefully from both directions.

Where the heck was I going with this? :-)

[mountainkitten.livejournal.com]

just so you know, you were totally visible to me when I met you at the choirloft when I was in the bay area visiting. :) Not simply because so many were happy to meet you finally, but that I found you easy to chat to about what was going on in my life... even though we just met.

I'm depending more and more on LJ for friendships because I've found I'm moving on from some of the other things that were once important to me. :)

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

I do remember when we met face-to-face the first time - after a few minutes of two obviously-shy people being shy, I remember relaxing and being comfortable hanging out with you. It happened a lot faster than it usually does when I meet someone the first time, just because I felt I already knew you, because of LJ.

I need to learn to reach out, too. Part of my problem is finding local people I want to hang out with :-)

[runeshower.livejournal.com]

Thought-provoking post. Now I want to write something similar. :-)

[tytso.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I don't travel to the Bay Area as much; and when I do, I'm usually spending time with Stacey. So unfortunately I haven't been very good about keeping up with our in-person friendship. Which is a pity, because I've always enjoyed hanging out with you and chatting about what's been going on in our lives, or about current events, or about airplanes, or about whatever.

But I've always thought of you as someone who had a huge social circle and support network, and always sort of envied you for that; so it's interesting to here you say that you think of yourself as being socially invisible.

[jcgbigler.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, a lot of the ways people make themselves visible and memorable in large groups work well for extroverts, but are both scary and effort-ful for introverts. You'd probably have a much easier time being visible & memorable one-on-one than in a big group.

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

Wow... CJ... Uh, I couldn't have said better what's been brewing in my mind lately than what you've said here... can I copy that and paste it into my LJ? Just... can't say anything else I guess other than I totally understand this, but don't necessarily know the right solution for me.

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

If you're interested, you would be welcome to join our Saturday lunch & gaming group, which usually meets in Sunnyvale or Belmont and is open to new people. I'm not sure exactly where you live, but maybe that's close enough to be accessible?

Several Caltech contemporaries of joedecker started it, and additional geeks/spice/etc. have joined in over the years. There is a private pilot in the group, and several people who travel a great deal, so you would have some shared interests even if the gaming is not appealing.

Follow up if you want to know more. Hm, does LJ provide any ability to email people, or can we only contact each other via journal entries?