27th
Over-Correction….
Do you think it’s possible to over-correct yourself? Change too much? I guess I have heard of people going “from one extreme to another,” but I didn’t think that phrase applied to me.
It totally does.
I’m sure if I thought about it long enough I could come up with several examples, but one thought stood out and prompted me to write this.
I used to get very, very, very attached to people. To an obsessive degree. Like, creepy obsessive. The Melissa B.’s and Nancy N.’s of my past can attest to this. Now, I chalk those Junior High ‘relationships’ as crushes I didn’t know what to do with. I put that in quotes because I never had a relationship with them, I just got attached. It had convinced myself that these people would come around and want to be close to me, too. Um, no. Did. Not. Happen.
I got over it, but it took time.
Now, I feel like I can let people go too easily.
Maybe it’s from years of touring. On so many tours I made friends and was so sure I would be close to them for years to come. I’m embarrassed by how long it took me to learn that tour is tour and when it’s over, man it’s over.
(And yes, I’ve gotten into relationships on tour that didn’t last past the end of the gig, but I’m not even talking about that. Of course, that sucked, too. Looking back on those people though, they were/are wonderful people and I’m certainly glad for the time we had, but know not staying together was for the best. As far as I know, they are all doing very well and that delights me immensely.)
Of course, I have a small circle of close friends I couldn’t imagine my life without. But the circles get bigger by leaps and bounds after those few. As of today, I have 569 friends on Facebook. Five Hundred and Sixty Nine FRIENDS. Now c’mon. I don’t really have that many friends. My “friends” are family,people I toured with, went to college with, high school, summer stock, Radio City, 2 message boards I belong to, freelance gigs, fire departments, blogs, and web series.
I went through and deleted a lot of people once I passed 600 a few months ago and I have been using the Ignore button when getting new requests, but I guess not enough. Why do I keep all of these friends? Well, honestly, most of them, because maybe, just maybe, it’ll lead to work someday. Yeah, yeah, how selfish of me! Tell me you don’t keep “friends” around because of something you might get from them down the road.
I’m getting off topic… what was I saying?
I’m about to go on old FB and delete some folks. It’s nothing personal. I just don’t want to spend my time trying to keep up with a ton of people I’m not really friends with anymore. What do I do then, when someone I have ‘unfriended’ reveals they haven’t unfriended of me?
I think my point was that I have reprogrammed myself to forget people more easily. I’m more “out of sight out of mind” than I ever have been. Is it self-preservation? Am I protecting myself by forgetting someone once I feel they’ve forgotten me?
