LARGETONY Blog

I have never had a lot of friends. Basically because I am a loner. I am perfectly content to go off into the woods by myself or hole myself up in my room and daydream or doodle for hours. I have nothing against others. I just often feel awkward or uncomfortable (for any number of reasons) around them. About the only time I’m in groups is when I’m playing basketball. But I’m reallty good at that, so I’m relaxed.

I feel much more in my element when I’m one on one with someone, but even then there are only few that I feel really close to. So, I tend to stick to myself. Consequently, this self-imposed exile often leaves me, when in need of a friend, with no one to turn to.

Friday, a week and a half ago was one of those days. That was the day that things went sour at work when I was looked over for a new position in favor of a guy who is fairly new (strike one) and hates me (strike two). I guess I could have rounded up the guys after work and look to them for support, but they had their own reasons for not wanting the new guy in charge. Plus, I just wanted to be alone and wallow in my pity. But after a few hours I needed to get it off my chest. With no inner circle I decide to write a blog entry about it.

I wasn’t prepared for the feeback. There were like over 25 commenst (a lot for me) and a fairly big batch of e-mail. I couldn’t believe it. All these people who don’t know me beyond some typed words, a big nose, and a bigger Johnson were taking the time out of their lives to show support or offer advice when they had absolutely nothing to gain from it. That’s how I know it was sincere.

I got some “that sucks,” some “chin up”s, and some objective points of view. But you know the best thing I got? I got a pretty damn cool circle of online friends. That’s what I got. I’ve been meaning to write for severals days to kind of let you guys (and gals) know how much I appreciated your notes and messages. It might make me sound like a little Dutch girl hiding in the attic, but I have to say it renewed my faith that there are a lot of good people out there.

Then of course a certain level of cynicism was restored after I posted my last entry (Sam and Jack). That’s when I got my first somewhat ugly comment. The one that started with “WTF.” While it doesn’t bother me that someone doesn’t like what I have written, or maybe doesn’t agree. it does raise the hair on my nuts a bit to have someone be unneccearily virulent (I busted out the Thesaurus for that one :-)) in expressing their opinion. And thanks again to my really cool friends who came to my defense against the particular comment. Again, you got my back when there was nothing in it for you. But after my initial gut reaction, I let the words of “Anonymous” roll off my back like like a big dollop of lube on the underside of your bottom’s balls. I mean how much cred does an attacker have when he won’t even identify himself?

That post got probably the widest cross section of commentsI ever had, ranging from the blistering “WTF” to “well done.” It was interesting to see how people took to it. Writing that entry was sort of an experiment on my part. As I have mentioned many times before, when I write in the blog, I just write as it flows out of my head. I don’t do any editing other than what I can do on the fly. I certainly stop for a moment and decide how to say things sometimes, but there’s no writing and then going back and fixing or coming back to it later. I like the idea of my blog being as spontaneous as possible. Anyway, I wanted to see if I could write something in the style of a story or fable without really working on it. Just see how it would come out. That idea of that post came about when I decided that I wanted to say something about how the U.S. was reacting in response to the London bombings. It just seemed that a lot of the more visible factions of the U.S. (government, certain media) didn’t seem to be handling the situation as selfishlessly as Britain did toward us after 9/11.

When I wrote the piece I was worried that I was hammering the metaphors a little too hard. I wished that I had the vocabulary to be more subtle. But I wasn’t going to stop and look at a Thesaurus. I was just going to write. But the first few people who read it seemed to think I was writing something about my work situation. Okay, too subtle, I thought. A few others got bits of it. Then Jimmy nailed it on the head (even including examples. I think he may have had flash cards at the ready, too. :- ) ) So, just as I was feeling pretty good about what I had come up with, “L” busted me back down to private, lettting me know the metaphors were a bit heavy-handed. I felt a little bit like a bowl of porridge (sp?). Some bears find it too hot. Some find it too cold. Some think it’s just right. (Okay, I know that’s not quite how the story goes, but call it artistic license.)

FOOTNOTE: For those who are interested, things at work are pretty much back to the status quo after a few days of tension. Things are weird if you get assigned to a certain guy’s crew, but so far that has not happened to me. In fact, I think the higher ups are trying to make sure it doesn’t happen. At least for a while. In the meantime, I’m keeping my eyes and ears open (while keeping my mouth shut) for something new. It may take two weeks, two months, or two yea– nah, I won’t last another two years with this company, but until then I’ll stay I’m own little corner all to myself.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 6:57 pm and is filed under blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.