Finding a Community, Making New Friends, Reviving My Love Life, and Letting Go Of The Past

Well damn, these challenges just keep getting better and better.... The funny thing is how many of these attempts I have already made independent of this program. Its a lot of fits and starts, meanderings and redirections. I feel the need to address these particular challenges at once, since I need to catch up anyway, but also because these are sometimes difficult for me to do, more than anything else. I have considered myself a loner, someone on the fringe, slightly aloof since high school days. I have been in situations where I was part of a group my circumstance or default, and I didn't stand out. I was not uniquely recognizable, did not feel that my presence made any profitable difference or even totally adhere to the mindset or objectives of the group. I couldn't sign on their dotted lines, and my voice was a bit dissonant against theirs.

So what to do? Well, I started focusing on what did I want to be a part of, what drove my passions, what cold pools did I try to take a dip in. I won't say that all of these I am currently and immediately successful in, but it is an ongoing project. I did reach out to someone dear to me to be an accountability partner, to help me in this process of becoming financially balanced. I made an investment in my own future in faith and joined an online community LearnVest, and am looking forward to the events where I will be networking with other men and women getting on track. I will make an effort to go to my meetup group of self-starting business-minded women, and maybe make a friend there, too, or at least gain some practical tools. Just yesterday my uncle contacted me on LinkedIn and asked me for more details about what I am interested in, so that he could possibly find connections in Guyana. Working in Guyana! Now that would be an unexpected and exciting change.

A tenant also gave me a contact yesterday for someone who works with local government, and is possibly looking for an intern with the elections approaching. I am interested in civil community service, and although I don't think I want to be totally entrenched in government, I am definitely interested in policy-making that directs a lot of government's practices. Well, I guess I have the beginnings of a new perspective.

In the realm of reviving my love life? Backseat burner. It is over a year since I broke up with J, moved out and spent a summer being pitifully single. The Fall of 2011 brought some renewal to my sense of romantic adventure, but I am still not at a place where I feel comfortable seeking out anything, or making myself emotionally available to another new person. I really feel that I need to focus more on my own uplifting right now. The old adage of loving yourself, knowing your own self-worth, thus making yourself ready for "the one" that may appear... I partially accept this. I don't manhunt. My ex found me in a bookstore, twice. I see tons of interesting people that I wish I had the guts to walk up to and engage, but I don't even do that with women who might become bosom buddies.

So, I will continue working on my engaging mannerisms and dynamic personality traits. And I am getting more comfortable being by myself, so maybe at some point I will be comfortable again accepting romantic company.

Letting Go of The Past? Well, I finally got in the pool two days ago. And moved practically everything out of J's apartment last month. And that list of past hurts and disappointments will be burned tonight in the backyard.