Social Animal

I was never really a social person. I knew it from a very young age that i did not like hanging out with friends as much as being at home or anywhere else and alone. My mom used to worry that i preferred to play with my neighbor’s rabbit rather than the neighbors themselves.

I remember i had a neighbor, Leo, who was about my age and  had two most “adorablest” rabbits. And i used to go over to his house just to play with them. I used to feed them grass and follow them around on the lawn. Leo would sometimes hang around with us but i remember tolerating him only because he was the proud owner of the two rabbits. One day i had a fight with him over something so silly i don’t even remember. But i remember being so upset because i couldn’t meet up with my real friends, those rabbits. Seeing me all heartbroken my mother made us kiss and make up. However, neither one of us was interested in friendship. It was more of a trade. I made friends with him so i could hang out with his rabbits and he made friends back so he could play Atari at my place. So often he was at my place playing Atari while i was at his, playing with his rabbits.

Improvements started showing in my social behavior during my university years when i stopped being a zombie and started hanging out with real people, that is other than my online friends whom i’ve never met in my life before. It was definitely not a natural thing for me to do and took a lot of effort on my part. After a lot of faux pas and with time, my social skills got honed. And near the end of my “time” in university i bagged quite a few friends, some of whom are very close to me and i don’t know what i’d do without them.

However, recently the motivation to be social has been somewhat dampened. I’m not so sure why. And i find myself limiting my social interaction with only my closest friends and my boyfriend :s . And interestingly enough i do not even miss hanging out anymore. And i also  find that i have been engaging myself more and more on non social activities such as blogging and bog reading, photoshop’ing, jogging, solo shopping, reading books, browsing and researching online about Islam! So much has been the lack of motivation for social networking that i am getting less and less active even on Facebook and have been MIA on MSN Messenger for quite some time now.

It bothers me now, though. Because if i know myself well enough ( i’d like to believe that i do) then this problem might not be just a phase. Unless you would like to call the last 6 years a phase. I think that a time period of more than a year cease to be a “phase” and become a radical change in life style. And that is why it bothers me. Because if i am to be this unsocial for say, the next 6 years, then this is not good news. Because, when it was quite easy to be a zombie, ignore the rest of the world and live my life the way i want to in the past, it is quite the opposite now. Both my work and my personal life depends a lot on my ability to build relationships and keep up with people around me and keep in touch.

So help me God!

No.Wait.

I need to fix this without any divine intervention. Dinner plans? let me know!

10 things i hate about myself (just for now)

1. I do not make any sense sometimes

2. I do not understand office politics

3. I do not handle awkward situations well enough

4. I get hungry quite often

5. I let people take advantage of me very easily

6. I can’t be bitchy back

7. I can’t be mad at people for long

8. I am very very very forgetful (a total goldfish)

9. I am emotionally dependent

10. I am insomniac

“Interesting Realization”

My last post was a therapeutic post. It was a message from me to myself. In fact, that is one of the few reasons i started writing blogs. Many of the examples jumped right out of my own life. For example, me treating friends lunch in fancy Bella Italia in the same month i had to forgo buying much needed furniture at home. Its been well over two months and my living room still has only the bare essentials..minus curtains :s. Another example of “my pursuit of funness” is me smoking while i’m on trips with friends. I do not smoke otherwise. It is only when i am with friends having “fun” that i like to smoke one or two.

I thought that maybe i just need to write it down. Maybe if i see it in print it will prompt me to take action. Maybe. And so i did. But while i was writing them down, something kept me from disclosing the person i am really talking about. I thought, that i really do not need to disclose the person. It should be enough to just document the problems and faults and the situation. The printed faults would suffice in propelling me to fix whatever needs to be fixed.

Its funny how i can repeat my past behavior even when i am fully aware of its faults. Its funny how i cannot even face my problems and document it here forever. If it scares me to read my faults in my own blog, then how is it that i can expect myself to work on this realization for a better future?

But a certain comment of a certain friend hit me with an interesting realization. There is a fine line of difference between realizing the problems of life that plague  us and the problems that plague ME in particular. And the moment i can separate the two and shed light on them individually is the moment i will be able to correct every problem, at first on an individual level and then on a group level and maybe someday on a global level!

So here i go!

All about fun!

FUN. A word most people are stuck on these days. It is equated in every way possible in all the activities of life. Be it lifestyle, marriage, job, education, etc. You leave your girlfriend because she is not fun anymore, you leave your job because its not fun anymore, you change your location because its not fun anymore, you change friends because they are not fun anymore! Fun is the underlying motivation for life’s major decisions for many of us today. It is the deciding factor. We shape our lifestlyle in such a way that it has zero tolerance for anything that is..god forbid..not fun!!

I say this today but i realized it a lot earlier. When i was young it seemed very logical. But now, if not wiser but at least a bit more aware of life, i find it a bit odd. When it is true that life without fun is not..well..fun , but should fun reign over our lives to such an extent that it controls and guides each and every emotion we feel and every decision we make and every thought we think? Is it really that important in one’s life that reason itself should be ignored so that it makes way for fun and more fun?

I know of people who spend thousands of Taka treating friends (with bank accounts full of money) in fancy places while they live frugally at home just because its fun to hang out with rich friends. I know of people who left jobs because they need time to drop off CVs to organizations that are more fun. I know of people (non smokers and non drinkers) who drink and smoke at social gatherings just because its fun to do so. I know of people who moved from Bangladesh to the US because its a more fun place to live in.

And i could go on forever with examples of people who jumped the bandwagon of fun and are happily rolling down the bumpy road of life. However, pretty soon we will find people losing their beliefs and taking on new ones because they seem like more fun! Pretty soon we will be so lost in having fun that we will lose the motivation to learn, to love, to give, to share, to…live…because god forbid if these should stop being fun!