Before I get to part 2 of my plans for the future, I want to digress for a moment. I find it fascinating sometimes to see how an individual blog post progresses. Much of the time, before I go to start writing, I have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to say. I’ve thought about it; I know the major points I want to make; I have a rough mental outline.

But as I start to write, something odd happens. My neurons fire in a different way than I expected. I start writing A, B, C, and D, and it becomes more like A, B, C(2), E, H, and L. Or perhaps simply X, Y and Z. I end up somewhere I didn’t intend to go with the post.

Sometimes the reason is simple: I didn’t really know what I wanted to say. I thought I did, but it wasn’t fleshed out in my head enough. But other times, like with the previous post, it just went in a different direction because as I picked at a sub-aspect of the post, I found resonance of a different sort. Almost like I knew what I wanted to say but wasn’t entirely sure WHY I wanted to say it, and as I wrote, my intentions revealed themselves to me. As a result, I went with the flow, changing the direction of what I wanted to talk about.

As a reader, you might suspect it from time to time; other times, you won’t see it at all. For me, it is REAL easy to tell. First and foremost? The title of my post has to change. When I start writing, I put in a topic, but as I near the finish line for the post, I go back and read it in conjunction with the near-final text and realize my title has almost nothing to do with what I wrote. Secondly, it is almost always part 1 of a series of posts, not by intent but by the result…I finished the post and realized it was too long, so I cut it into smaller chunks, but in so doing, it often becomes clear that it is too long simply because something else was on my mind, hidden to my conscious side, and I ended up writing about something entirely different. A prologue that alters the context and direction of the post. Which leaves me calling it part 1 before I start writing about the original topic.

In my previous post, I talked about my mindset over the last 2 months or so. The mental struggle that I’ve been feeding, waiting for my birthday to arrive so I could kick off my new adventure in goal-setting, a symbolic and ritualistic endeavour. That struggle could have been one line, maybe two. Instead, I wrote a whole post about my mood, a previous pity party I threw that got me here, and my dark passenger / shadow self that hides inside and helps me endure, even embrace, isolation when my light-bearing side craves connection. It is and was a prologue to the “inventory” I mention below. The backstory for the hero within my personal story, if a hero can even be said to exist yet. Whether it’s the hero I need or the hero I deserve, that remains to be seen.

I had intended this “series” to be a short opening and then the grand “tadaaaa” reveal of my new goals. Instead, I started talking about dark passengers and now the foundational elements for composing the ritual and choosing my new goals. As I said in the previous post, much of what I base it on overlaps with self-help books, addiction groups, and even yoga mantras. I am not unique or original in that regard, alas. Join me as I review some of my key precepts.

A. Know the limits of my span of control

As much as I want to exert my will on the universe, and bring my resources to bear on the things that I CAN control, shit will still happen. We’ll end up with a housefire that leaves a thin layer of powder all over the first floor and part of the second floor that will linger for months, no matter what we do. Other people’s behaviour at work will interfere with my carefully laid plans and vision. I can’t control any of that. I can only control myself, and sometimes, not even that, as much as I try. I know that standing still is rarely a good option for me; I need to keep pushing myself forward or my dark passenger will make plans with the squirrels in my head, and I will backslide. It’s like a constant current pushing me out to sea; I need to keep swimming or drift.

Sometimes my dark passenger takes up more resident space in my brain and heart than I would like. I don’t usually give it a public license to roam, but I know it is still there. Sometimes it is even helpful. Like with the house fire. I didn’t have any hesitation. As soon as I saw it, I knew to get Andrea and Jacob out of the house and to have them call 911, while I assessed whether it was small enough to get completely out with the fire extinguisher while waiting for the fire department to arrive. My dark passenger removes fear or uncertainty and allows me to act when I need to, decisively even. Active energy to love and hate at the same time.

Sometimes it is beneficial to move forward assuming no limits, that I can control all things, and nothing will stop me (aka f*** the universe); other times, I need to recognize that there are limits and I will not be perfect, far from it. I hesitate to call it AA’s “day by day” approach or a reflection of the sports metaphor of playing “one game at a time”, but it’s a little like that. Plans help, but the universe doesn’t really care what I am planning. Heck, sometimes it feels like it is actively trying to block me. As long as I know man plans while the universe laughs, I know the end is not linear.

B. Everything starts with an inventory, not a pity party

Various programs often start with doing a “moral inventory” of your life. It is more like turning my analytical talents inward with an almost viciousness or ruthlessness to ensure no falsehoods remain, only truth. To burn off any lies that I might tell myself to protect my Id or Ego. That would have to include looking at the events of the last two months, some of which were chosen by me and some by the universe. It is akin to doing an x-ray of my raw psyche. Who I am and what I choose to do. No illusions. I’m checking the state of all the different energies and how to rebalance them.

But I am really struggling with this post. I have written the next section 3 times from scratch, with 3 attempts in between to just rewrite and edit it more towards what I want to say. Each time, it has looked like I was saying “I have no friends, wah wah wah” or “all my friends suck”, neither of which is true nor what I’m trying to say. The nuances are important, and I haven’t been able to find them.

Let’s back up a minute. I know that I am a cool blue analytical introvert by nature, meaning that I live inside my head more than on the cutting edge of spontaneity. I am not social by nature, and if I’m in a large group, I feel like I’m surrounded by yellow-energy vampires, sucking me dry with each passing moment. Yet what has been triggering me of late is a lack of social connectedness to others, and I’ve been trying to piece together a way to explain how it is “different” from previous points in my life.

I’ll invent a metaphor for the post, although I’m not totally sure it holds together. I’ll start by classifying social “interlocutors” as falling into one of five categories:

1. Casual friends — regular interaction, no real closeness;
2. Friends — often location-based (work, school), these are the people you hang out with regularly in those locations aka your peeps;
3. Close friends — those that have transcended a boundary like work or school to be people you hang out or bond with after the proximity transactions;
4. Best friends — relatively obvious, the ones that you can open your soul to and discuss whatever is going on; and,
5. Family/love.

Lots of people blend those categories or collapse them into one level. Everyone in the world is their best friend! Yeah, not me.

When I was in elementary school, I had probably a 20 / 30 / 10 / 10 / 30% split. Family dominated, one best friend, two close friends, not much in the others except at school, but I was far from the life of the party.

When I went into high school, that mix probably shifted to a 10 / 30 / 20 / 20 / 20% mix. Few simple interactions, some key friends at school, 1 friend outside school, a best friend in and out, and my family down a bit.

When I went to Trent, the ratio was probably 5 / 20 / 20 / 0 / 75%. I had a serious girlfriend who was initially my best friend and then was just family/love. Most of my time went to the long-distance relationship.

At UVic, something shifted. I knew going in that I was likely to be fairly homesick as I’m not good at making friends, and I didn’t know anyone there. Out of desperation, I corralled a small posse of misfit toys who like me tended not to have a huge entourage. Two were really close, but I’d hesitate to quite call them besties. Meanwhile, my family’s stuff waned with the distance. The ratio doesn’t fit as well, but I’d say 10 / 40 / 40 / 0 / 10% would be close. High on friends, low on anything else. Yet when I left UVic, they faded away, as they had from elementary school, high school and Trent. They were primarily location-based friendships.

In my late 20s and early 30s, something odd happened. I got 3 best friends. One male, two females. With the one male, we went out for dinner regularly, and went to hockey games, a true buddy. We talked about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the price of tickets for 67s games. One of the women was a work-friend initially, but there was a resonance of spirit that we both felt, and we would have really long conversations, including one overnight sitting in her car after coffee shops and restaurants had closed. One of the best conversations I’ve ever had in my life, and I doubt I remember any of the topics, just the experience. It wasn’t romantic, it was just pure utter friendship. A third was with another woman, and over time, it changed. We had long conversations too, and at one point, there was romantic interest on my part, with none on hers. Only one of those friendships really continues today, and while we will always be close, that bestie status would likely never repeat.

Yet even within that period, I had another 5-6 close friends that transcended the location-based friendships. The mix was probably 10 / 10 / 30 / 40 / 10. A very different look and feel to my life.

Fast-forward to now? It’s probably a somewhat diminished 10 / 20 / 10 / 0 / 60 ratio. An imbalance that is as much about choice, and spending time with Andrea and Jacob, as it is about a limit of social energy to devote beyond the basics.

I have close friends, some from long ago, some from now, and I could pick up the phone and call one, ask them to join me for a drink or something if I needed someone to talk to, and they would come. But it would be, umm, out of the ordinary to do that. We don’t really have that kind of relationship. We get together every now and then, someone’s in the area, there’s an event, something. But no regular interaction. Some close friends have dropped a bit to regular friends perhaps, and I have no real “bestie” contender. No one to just talk about my life with in passing, at least not outside of proximity situations. Some of that is the nature of adult friendships and life intervening, some of that is just the type of blue introvert that I am.

While Andrea and Jacob will always be my bestest of friends by a factor of 10, that’s not really what I’m talking about. If I sat on my butt, did absolutely nothing, tried to arrange nothing, just drifted along on Facebook etc., maybe the occasional blog, generally be passive / responsive only, my level of interaction would be pretty minimal. I’m not at the top of anyone’s speed dial to do something, particularly as I prefer 1:1 stuff rather than large groups.

This isn’t exactly new, though. Outside of my late 20s, when I had the windfall of close friendships, I’ve always been the instigator. During previous “inventories”, one thing I recognized was that I didn’t really have much in the way of guy friends. So I made a concerted effort on and off for about 5-8 years (depending on how you count them) to organize more outings with guys. I tried to organize what I called MMMMMM. Mid-Month Movie Madness for Men who like Meat. I tried to get a bunch of guy friends to go out for wings and a movie. Or drinks and a movie. Or dinner and a movie. Rarely could I get more than a couple to even nibble, and often no one would show. I tried various forms of that outing, maybe a bit more variety, a monthly dinner or something, no movie. Added women to see if couples would come. I could never get any sort of traction or critical mass. Eventually, I listened to my dark passenger’s advice and took the hint. I stopped trying. Every once in a while, I get this idea of doing a wing night at the house to try different Epicure sauces, get a bunch of guys together to hang out on the deck, nosh and natter, joke around. Maybe it’s a longing for the carefree days of my youth, where a bunch of friends and I would joke around at the house. Or hanging out at UVic. Maybe it’s just nostalgia. My dark passenger likes to point out it’s hard to be nostalgic for something you never really had, but I can delude myself occasionally. I wonder without resolution if I truly want that group of male friends or if I want to be the type of guy who has that group.

I feel compelled to say again that this is not a pity party. This is not “woe is me”; it’s just the reality of the connections I do or do not have. It’s not a slap at my friends; I’m not singing “Call Me, Maybe”. While the phrase “it is what it is” may be annoying, it’s also relatively accurate.

Where I go from there is part of the long-term planning. I could reach out to those close friends I have now, try to convert them into a bestie, find more time for them and ask for more time, try to expand one of them into the type of relationship I mean, but that’s not really quite right either.

I hate to rely on the outdated wisdom of Dale Carnegie or the simplistic psycho-babble of the Nike approach to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) of “Just Do It”, but the common wisdom out there is relatively linear and mathematical.

1. More interactions with people = more potential to find people with common interests.
2. More people with common interests = more potential to find friends
3. More friends = more potential to find close friends
4. More close friends = more chances to find a bestie
5. More chances at besties = more chance to make the connection I crave.

It’s a popular if simplistic model. Not quite “if you build it, he will come”, but a similar philosophy. And I tried it somewhat with astronomy. I joined RASC Ottawa. Attended meetings in person, volunteered to be the Star Party Coordinator, attended executive meetings, joined national committee, remain as the auditor for the financials, etc. In short, I got involved. And I got to level 3 of the math equation. I made some friends. Not any real close friends, but some good ones. I am not sure that I really have the personality that attracts people beyond that, I never have. It’s one of the limits of the model. If you go back to the Dale Carnegie method that looks like a used car salesman, I can find opportunities, but I can’t convert them into full sales. Astronomy might not have been the best choice, though — you tend to do a lot of it alone in the dark, it’s not truly a “group” event, although some others have made lifelong friends through the hobby. Others, not me.

Yet maybe I don’t need to. Maybe if I shift the current model from 10 / 20 / 10 / 0 / 60 to simply 15 / 25 / 20 / 0 / 40, that’s a better balance than I have now. I don’t really need to convert them to a bestie; maybe I just need more diversity in my interactions than I have now…more interactions, a few more regular location-based friends, a bit more time with close friends, and more freedom for Andrea and Jacob from their energy vampire. I can’t control if I make more close friends, but I can control making a better targeted effort.

One thing that I can watch out for though is that the activities that generate those interactions with others should probably be “ends” in and of themselves. In other words, going back to astronomy, I will do it because I like astronomy, and that’s enough. If I get more friendships out of it, that’s a bonus. I probably won’t end up with people regularly going for wings and beer to hang out, but that’s okay.

I just have to make sure I see the glass as half-full, not half-empty.

For the blue energy (analytical, introvert), I have more than my share of hobbies to focus on.

For green energy (intuitive, introvert), I think I need to siphon a bit of yellow-green energy over to the green a bit.

For red energy (analytical, extrovert), I’m going to siphon off a bit of yellow-red energy to get myself going, but it might take longer.

For the yellow energy (intuitive, extrovert), the current model really doesn’t work for me. I have to push more of the “creativity side”, I think.

I’m not sure this is the post I originally intended, but it is the one I ended up with when all was said and done. I am not sure yet why, though. It just is.