Out with the Old, In with the New

Every so often in life, I appear to arrive at a kind of... social crossroads, for lack of a better way to describe it. At first, I just find I have trouble relating to my friends groups to the same extent I once did. Then I start noticing myself becoming actively irritated with individual members of those groups, usually because something they do, say, or think seems immature or unreasonable on one level or another. Then one day I just wake up in a state of active disgust with nearly everyone I know from that group and just want to be permanently rid of most of them.

That gradual process of disillusionment is what eventually caused me to realize I'd outgrown the friends I'd had throughout my teenage years, as well as most of my core family. It's what made me want to jettison myself from the online art community years ago, not to mention cut ties with almost everyone that even remembered I used to make digital art. Now it's officially happened with that group of LiveJournal people I used to be so tight with. I'm just sick to death of how petty, and gossipy, and childish they all are.

These are feelings I'd been aware of for quite some time. However, the whole David incident was what really dragged them out into the open. I'm not the sort of person that takes kindly to another person's decision to ignore my wishes and just hop right over any boundaries I might have set, but that's exactly what David eventually decided to do. Right after I removed and blocked him on every social media platform I could think of, he went out of his way to track me down and tweet me on Twitter, the one place I'd forgotten he had an account and failed to enforce a block. Then at some point yesterday, I got another message from him basically begging for another chance at friendship. I had previously responded to the tweet with a brief explanation as to why I didn't want to be friends anymore, but I didn't dignify yesterday's follow-up message with a response at all. I'm only going to tell you once.

On Growing Up and Its Consequences

So I cut ties with a couple of friends this week. Sadly, it seems that the more of my own issues I resolve and the more growing up I do, the more I start to see some of my so-called friends for the losers, eternal victims, and rotting garbage people that they are. As far as how I feel about that? On the one hand, I'm really pleased to realize I've grown enough as a person to finally assess such situations accurately. But for someone that really hasn't had many close friendships to begin with, growing up can also be a really lonely process. I definitely feel like I lose friends these days at a much faster rate than I make new ones.

This time, the people in question were a middle-aged male friend I'd known online for years and his female partner of about a year whom I was only just getting to know. (We can call them David and Terri for the sake of this post.) David is of the age where people that haven't really taken very good care of themselves over the course of their lives start having serious health scares and something to that exact tune finally happened to him maybe a month or two ago. He's also been struggling with some pretty serious depression and anxiety lately, some of it probably related to the health scare and some of it not.

Now David has always been a little bit stunted as a person. Like many people I've known online, he sees and presents himself as one thing when actually he's another. (No real judgment on that front. We've all been there, including me. Hell, especially me.) Like many people in that boat though, he claims to tell it like it is and to be all about brutal honesty, but only when he's the one dishing it out. When someone else is serving it up -- even if it's someone he claims to respect -- he handles it with all the grace and dignity of a toddler. That's not actually the reason I cut ties with him though. That happened because I decided I could no longer tolerate the way he treats people, particularly his partners. 

On Figurative Spring Cleaning

I don't know where the time goes, but it's definitely that time of year again. Lent is over with. Easter has come and gone. The weather is warming up and Seth has officially had to add tending the lawn to his rotating to-do list again because it's green and actively growing. I'm busy managing my business as my clients begin to make their usual post-tax season plans for their content needs. Collectively, we're starting to think about the warmer months and the different possibilities they bring with them.

As far as how I'm doing personally, I'm happy to report that I'm still doing an A+ job of keeping up with the workouts I promised myself I'd stay serious about way back in January. When I first started, I don't know that I expected to see much of a difference in how I looked or felt after only three months, but I've been pleasantly surprised. I've lost a few pounds for sure. I'm also feeling stronger, healthier, and just better all around. A lot of the issues I simply blamed on getting older before have even noticeably improved (i.e. less energy, lower moods, and lower sex drive) much to my great relief. I feel a lot less "old" as a result.

I've been feeling a lot more motivated in regards to other things as well. Just knowing I'm being proactive about my health and watching my physical state start to move in the right direction as a result has helped me with my depression and made me feel more optimistic about certain things. Knowing that I'll only continue to get slimmer, and healthier, and more comfortable in my own skin has found me getting excited about maybe actually "doing things" again in the near future -- going places, working on personal projects, and -- most importantly -- actually recording my life again. My thoughts, my experiences, and my adventures.