Lately I’ve been more eager to say what’s on my mind in a social setting. What bothers me is that sometimes I do it at the expense of someone else. It’s kind of new for me, being so socially charged. I think it’s because of living alone. I have more stored up social energy now, because when I go home for the day I don’t have to talk to anyone. So when I hang out with my friends now, I have so much to say that I think I’ve been overpowering others. I’m trying to make an effort to stop.

It happens at work sometimes, too. From the stories I’ve told and the way I talk, I think the biostatisticians think that I’m a slacker and that I don’t respect the people I work for on my projects. I’ve kind of presented the hooligan side of myself to them, and I think I might have subconsciously done that on purpose. Whenever I feel like things are too formal or too “nice”, I feel the need to break out. When things aren’t “real” enough, I try to inject some reality into the situation. And work tends to be a bit too formal for my taste, at least whenever we hang out with some of the statisticians my age.

Who knows.

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My bookshelf has run out of unread books, but I needed something to keep myself occupied. So I started reading Ender’s Game again. It really is a great book.

I ran across a paragraph that I identified with today. Ender had been made a commander, so his life started going down a different path from his closest friend, Alai.

The next day [Ender] passed Alai in the corridor, and they greeted each other, touched hands, talked, but they both knew that there was a wall now. It might be breached, that wall, sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken. The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached … from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.

It made me think about the friendships I had that are like that now. For a while now, I haven’t talked to many of the people I went to college with. That’s just the way life is. People move on. Nothing lasts forever. They meet their future wives or husbands, and then they fade away a little. Or maybe their path is slowly veering off from yours because of different values or ambitions. That’s life. You go where you can find a job or acceptance.

I think living alone is helping me solidify my self-acceptance. I used to hang on too tightly to my friends, relying on them for self-esteem. Then when they weren’t around as much, I felt like a piece of me had gone with them. You know, I don’t really know if that behavior is healthy or not. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.

Life goes on.

I hate TV commercials for praise and worship albums. They make me want to gag sometimes.