So what I have learned is that I am a terrible blogger. Really I blame the holiday season. Kind of. I haven’t rolled the dice in a couple weeks now, because I was either a) lazy, or b) it was cold/raining or c) I was actually busy trying to have a social life.

Needless to say, I thought I should write anyways because the whole goal of this exercise is to try to develop myself as a person and find the things that I need to, and more importantly, want to improve about myself.

Fair warning, this is about to be a wall of text and will have little (probably no) pictures.

Chances

I started climbing at a new gym once a week in an attempt to meet some new people through MeetUp. I was there when Ashima did this. I don’t know who’s reading this, and how many of you are climbers, but this shit is fucking impressive.

When I was talking about it with some of my family, someone brought up one of Ashima’s quotes.

“Climb through your problems, failure is a huge part of success.”

This quote is basically the same as every single other quote about success, risk, and failure that get thrown around. Basically, all of these: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2013/12/30/30-powerful-quotes-on-failure/

The basic lesson being one that is conceptually very easy to grasp, but for most people (myself included) is near impossible to actualize. I am trying to fix that.

I have recently starting talking to a friend of a friend who I have hung out with numerous times on a fairly regular (basically every day) basis and found that she is a pretty spectacular person. Not to say that it wasn’t always fun to hang out with her in a group setting, but I found that I really enjoy just talking to her. Most of the time we talk about really stupid shit like how to blow up any chance I have with the people I match with on Tinder, or whether or not there is any merit to hugemongous boobs vs. well sized hand held ones, to breaking up the marriages of people we don’t like. It’s nonsense, and it’s amazing, and it’s a great way for me to bleed out a lot of my stress during the day. (If you’re reading this, note that you are on notice for failing me in this because you are always traveling.)

That being said, it was actually really, really hard for me to message her the first time that I did. I guess at some point in my life I must have added her to my Google+ group and so she was always on my friend list and showing as “available” to talk to, I just never did it. The first things that cross my mind when I think about doing shit like that are always along the lines of “maybe xyz-person will think I’m bothering them, maybe they don’t actually like me and that’s why we don’t talk, maybe I’ll be really boring and they will start to not like me, probably better if I don’t reach out first.” Always. Without fail. A lot of time it even happens with people I consider to be my very good friends.

I definitely considered messaging her a risk. I legitimately had to debate with myself if I was willing to not have her as a person to talk to at gatherings because I would make it awkward by messaging her online. I have this internal dialogue with myself significantly more often than I probably should, and definitely more often than is healthy for me.

Along that line, I started talking to another friend of a friend who is really good friends with friend-of-friend-A. I don’t talk to her as much, but the three of us have gone out once or twice and it was actually really amazing to me that it wasn’t awkward and that they continue to speak to me. They are basically the only friends-of-friends that I have ever hung out with independent of the mutual friend. Ever. I’m chalking that shit up to a great big win in my book.

I recently joined a Meetup group. I was really looking for one to fit my personality, but there wasn’t a group called “Misanthropes of New York” and it didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to start one. Anyways, I joined a climbing group and it is actually pretty cool. There are a lot of really cool people that climb and I am glad I get to meet some of them. I don’t know that I will ever hang out with them outside of the Meetup and/or climbing, but it nice to be able to show up somewhere and be greeted by people that know, and may even like, you.

Needless to say, these couple of events have given me a fairly larger boost in self-confidence. They have allowed me to feel very much more comfortable being myself and with being alone. I think I have a tendency to strike people as aloof, condescending and arrogant a lot of the time. Which is probably because that’s the easiest way for me to avoid having to interact with people on anything other a purely superficial level.

I went to get donuts (because why the fuck isn’t everyone in the world as obsessed with donuts like me) with my buddy the last time I went home and he said one of the best/worst things anyone has really ever said straight to my face. We were talking about something that I don’t even remember and he turned and looked me in the face and said “That’s weird because you are basically the most insecure person I know.” This is a truth that I have known my entire life, and it is a truth that I do not typically have a problem admitting. It is however, a very interesting and damaging thing to hear someone describe you as. I honestly can’t decide if I am angry at him for saying that to me or not. I am not sure if I am truly that insecure and that transparent, or if he is acting off of old information because I haven’t seen him in a couple years, of if he said it out of spite to knock me down a peg.

I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. It really comes down to whether or not I believe what he says or not. I would love to believe that he is wrong. New York has definitely made me harder, it has made me more callous, but at the same time it has made me stronger, more assertive and arguably more confident. Coming to New York was always a huge risk for me, it was one of the biggest risks I have ever taken in my life and I would love to believe that it is paying off.

The jury is just still out as to whether or not it has.