Friend Theory
Wow, it's... been a long time.
I should go and count how many entries start with some sort of reference to how long it's been since my last entry.
I should go and count how many entries start with some sort of "I should go and count how many entries start with X" phrase.
So, here I am. I've been in college again for a few weeks. Classes are going well. I'm translating The Birds, which is fun, because Greek is cool and theater is cool. (Turns out, Aristophanes was a good writer.) I'm reading a bunch of science fiction, which is fun, because, uh, science fiction is cool. I'm reading about epistemology, which is fun, because knowing things is cool. And I'm... sitting around waiting to read about semantics, because so far that class has only been dealing with basic logic which I know rather well by this point. On the upside, I got to skip a class! (No, really. People who felt confident in their knowledge of basic logic and set theory were allowed to just not show up yesterday.)
On the club side of things, all three of the ones I'm partly responsible for are going really well. OBOC got a bunch of newbies this semester--enough that, assuming we hold on to them all, our numbers have almost completely recovered from losing all those seniors. (The next challenge, of course, is doing that AGAIN. We're going to lose even more people after this year. OBOC is going to switch from top-heavy to bottom-heavy, probably... only to cycle through again, because that's how it works, yo.) URSGA has more or less doubled its size just from newbies this year, which is fantastic, and can only mean good things as we work to bring the club back up from its previous state of, uh, disrepair. Even PCC is having boomy attendance, with Dinner Dialogues hosting twice as many people as this time last year. So, in short, everything is going well.
Yay! Now the recap of my life is over and I can get to the real reason I'm writing this entry.
Fairly early on in the school year, something hit me, and has only continued to grow and percolate in my mind. That first thought was, in a nutshell, "I have no friends."
Let me qualify. I have a girlfriend. She is very much my best friend. But she is also my girlfriend. So the first qualification is "I have no platonic friends." (As a note, because "platonic" can mean various things, among them not things I want to mean, I would like to clarify that I'm using the colloquial definition of both non-romantic and non-sexual.)
I had some very good friends in high school, and I am still in contact with a few of them. I actually interact with some more than others, but the ones I still pay attention to on the internet I do still consider my friends. Were we spatially closer, I'm sure we would hang out all the time (well... sometimes. This IS me we're talking about). There are also some people far, far away who I've only ever known on the internet. So the second qualification is "I have no platonic friends here."
That's not to say I'm some kind of asocial loner. I am in social groups, if sometimes only a little. There are a number of people on this campus I very much enjoy interacting with when circumstance brings us together. A lot of the people in OBOC. A lot of the people in URSGA. A lot of the people in PCC. Most of the people in Greek. But here's where we get into what I mean by "friend." I was a harsh categorizer, back in high school. Using the criteria of that time, all those people would fall not into the category of "friend," but "good acquaintance." Just to be nicer to myself, I'll be modifying the labels a bit--but the actual meaning is the same. So, I can consider all of those people "friends," but there is still a big difference between them and what my high-school self would consider a bona fide "friend." So, for my current purposes, the third qualification is "I have no good platonic friends here."
But what is a "good friend"?
A few days' worth of random thinking has been spent on this. A few days, of course, is not really enough to come up with a coherent answer. It must obviously be more than what makes a generic "friend," and so more than just enjoying interactions when they happen to occur. But how much more? How do I define this? A checklist of criteria? A threshold event? Not duration--I've made good friends very quickly, and had generic friends for long periods. How important is reciprocity?
Meanwhile, a good amount of my energy has been spent elsewhere. See, I've realized I have no friends. So, I'm going to try to change that. One of my goals for the year--yes, the whole year; I am confident but not hugely optimistic--is to make one (one!) friend who, while fitting the concrete categories of platonic and here, qualifies (most importantly) as good, as above.
So... how do I go about making a friend? I had a minor freak-out when I realized I don't actually know. It is my experience and belief that all of my friends, to date, have been friends due first to circumstance and only then because of any actual friend-connection. I have maintained friendships without circumstance forcing the two of us together (in a class, say), but I have never started one. Also, I kind of have never started a friendship, period. All of my friendships either grew organically from repeated interactions or, in some interesting cases in high school, were built up before we ever even met each other. Far be it from me to say organically-grown friendships are anything but preferable--but it's become clear to me that sitting around passively waiting for a friendship to happen isn't going to work anymore. And this is still college! It certainly wouldn't work in the real world. So, I have to figure out how to do what extroverts and socialites do. I have to learn how to actively make a friend.
I'm working on it.
This is my great experiment, this year. In some ways, it's as important--or more important--than my academic work, which is odd to think about... but at present, my life is unbalanced. At present, I am--to be the slightest bit hyperbolic--deficient. If I can fix this--if I can make this work--then the rewards to myself and my quality of life will be great.
Of course, if I can't...
I should go and count how many entries start with some sort of reference to how long it's been since my last entry.
I should go and count how many entries start with some sort of "I should go and count how many entries start with X" phrase.
So, here I am. I've been in college again for a few weeks. Classes are going well. I'm translating The Birds, which is fun, because Greek is cool and theater is cool. (Turns out, Aristophanes was a good writer.) I'm reading a bunch of science fiction, which is fun, because, uh, science fiction is cool. I'm reading about epistemology, which is fun, because knowing things is cool. And I'm... sitting around waiting to read about semantics, because so far that class has only been dealing with basic logic which I know rather well by this point. On the upside, I got to skip a class! (No, really. People who felt confident in their knowledge of basic logic and set theory were allowed to just not show up yesterday.)
On the club side of things, all three of the ones I'm partly responsible for are going really well. OBOC got a bunch of newbies this semester--enough that, assuming we hold on to them all, our numbers have almost completely recovered from losing all those seniors. (The next challenge, of course, is doing that AGAIN. We're going to lose even more people after this year. OBOC is going to switch from top-heavy to bottom-heavy, probably... only to cycle through again, because that's how it works, yo.) URSGA has more or less doubled its size just from newbies this year, which is fantastic, and can only mean good things as we work to bring the club back up from its previous state of, uh, disrepair. Even PCC is having boomy attendance, with Dinner Dialogues hosting twice as many people as this time last year. So, in short, everything is going well.
Yay! Now the recap of my life is over and I can get to the real reason I'm writing this entry.
Fairly early on in the school year, something hit me, and has only continued to grow and percolate in my mind. That first thought was, in a nutshell, "I have no friends."
Let me qualify. I have a girlfriend. She is very much my best friend. But she is also my girlfriend. So the first qualification is "I have no platonic friends." (As a note, because "platonic" can mean various things, among them not things I want to mean, I would like to clarify that I'm using the colloquial definition of both non-romantic and non-sexual.)
I had some very good friends in high school, and I am still in contact with a few of them. I actually interact with some more than others, but the ones I still pay attention to on the internet I do still consider my friends. Were we spatially closer, I'm sure we would hang out all the time (well... sometimes. This IS me we're talking about). There are also some people far, far away who I've only ever known on the internet. So the second qualification is "I have no platonic friends here."
That's not to say I'm some kind of asocial loner. I am in social groups, if sometimes only a little. There are a number of people on this campus I very much enjoy interacting with when circumstance brings us together. A lot of the people in OBOC. A lot of the people in URSGA. A lot of the people in PCC. Most of the people in Greek. But here's where we get into what I mean by "friend." I was a harsh categorizer, back in high school. Using the criteria of that time, all those people would fall not into the category of "friend," but "good acquaintance." Just to be nicer to myself, I'll be modifying the labels a bit--but the actual meaning is the same. So, I can consider all of those people "friends," but there is still a big difference between them and what my high-school self would consider a bona fide "friend." So, for my current purposes, the third qualification is "I have no good platonic friends here."
But what is a "good friend"?
A few days' worth of random thinking has been spent on this. A few days, of course, is not really enough to come up with a coherent answer. It must obviously be more than what makes a generic "friend," and so more than just enjoying interactions when they happen to occur. But how much more? How do I define this? A checklist of criteria? A threshold event? Not duration--I've made good friends very quickly, and had generic friends for long periods. How important is reciprocity?
Meanwhile, a good amount of my energy has been spent elsewhere. See, I've realized I have no friends. So, I'm going to try to change that. One of my goals for the year--yes, the whole year; I am confident but not hugely optimistic--is to make one (one!) friend who, while fitting the concrete categories of platonic and here, qualifies (most importantly) as good, as above.
So... how do I go about making a friend? I had a minor freak-out when I realized I don't actually know. It is my experience and belief that all of my friends, to date, have been friends due first to circumstance and only then because of any actual friend-connection. I have maintained friendships without circumstance forcing the two of us together (in a class, say), but I have never started one. Also, I kind of have never started a friendship, period. All of my friendships either grew organically from repeated interactions or, in some interesting cases in high school, were built up before we ever even met each other. Far be it from me to say organically-grown friendships are anything but preferable--but it's become clear to me that sitting around passively waiting for a friendship to happen isn't going to work anymore. And this is still college! It certainly wouldn't work in the real world. So, I have to figure out how to do what extroverts and socialites do. I have to learn how to actively make a friend.
I'm working on it.
This is my great experiment, this year. In some ways, it's as important--or more important--than my academic work, which is odd to think about... but at present, my life is unbalanced. At present, I am--to be the slightest bit hyperbolic--deficient. If I can fix this--if I can make this work--then the rewards to myself and my quality of life will be great.
Of course, if I can't...