A Little Progress

Last night I decided to go out and try to have a good time, maybe work on getting past the ‘innocent’ flirting to the actually expressing my interest in a person. I don’t know how clear I’ve made it hear but that seems to be the biggest reason I’ve been single for so long. I meet lots of nice people. I am interested in some of them. I am bold enough to meet them, speak to them, be friendly and even a little flirty and as charming as I’ve tried to make come naturally. Yet I have been too shy to do more. To ask for a phone number, or give them mine. Or even just my card, which by default just has my email address on it, so you’d think it would be less intimidating to give out. Too shy to ask them out to coffee (I don’t really drink coffee, but maybe I could ask them out for a boba) or a movie (I watch almost all the movies, so there’s something we could go watch just about every week. Plus, I have …108 DVDs plus ~22hrs of QAF that we could watch on my big TV) or whatever.

My mom said I just don’t ‘follow through’. She said she’d seen me flirt with people and them flirt back with me, but then I don’t follow through. I guess they’re waiting for me to take it past innocent flirting and I’m waiting for some sign from them or for them to do the same. My mom said I’m just not seeing the signals. So, I’ve been trying to work on that. I think I’ve just had too many friends over the years who flirted with everyone but didn’t mean anything by it; they just liked flirting. It’s given me a view of flirting slightly askew of reality, I think. I think I’ve begun to pick up on the fact that there are some people who are smiling at me and chatting candidly with me and being extra friendly to me who aren’t doing the same things with everyone they see.

I actually managed to see that last night and get past the generic friendliness to the actually expressing interest in a person, and I even scrawled my phone number on the back of my card and gave it out. Of course now I get to have that bit of anticipation that is “Will they call?” I don’t know whether it is a good or a bad thing that I didn’t get their phone number; I always worry I’ll be like John Favreau in Swingers, calling too soon or leaving an akward message (or string of akward messages) and destroy whatever connection I may have made. I won’t let the anticipation get to me too much though. I know my life doesn’t hinge on whether or not they contact me. I’ll still be alive and well and happy with my life and glad I got re-instated at ASU to take art classes right away in the fall and bubbling with joy and every other good thing in my life will still be true, even if one person or another that I would have liked to get to know better doesn’t feel the same way about me.

In case you don’t have a Demotivators calendar, take a look at the image for this month, Lonliness. Whether they call or not, I’ll have that to look at every day for the rest of the month.