UPDATE
Last night, I made an effort to reach out to a cafetaria buddy. I didn't expect to eat dinner with him, but I did. We've eaten together but haven't done anything else together beyond that. We talked over dinner, and instead of ending things after dinner ended, I invited him to watch some Family Guy in my room. We watched a few episodes, chatted, and then we went to his room to play some video games. This is the first time I've been in someone else's dorm in a long time.
Afterwards, we went to a poker tournament with another friend in the dorm. There were a bunch of tables, and I intentionally went to a table full of strangers. All of the players at my table were very socially adept. From the start, I felt fairly comfortable, but as the night went on, I started to clam up more and more. It was wierd. I just couldn't jump in and talk with these guys. It was a group setting, so side conversations were a no-no, but I just couldn't really say anything. Hmm... I was pretty quiet the whole time. If I can nail group conversation, I KNOW it can take me very very far. I did fine when I was one-on-one with my cafetaria buddy, but at the poker table, I was pretty quiet. I guess it's a good thing that I have identified a very specific social skill I need to develop in order to accomplish my goals.
While playing poker, I constantly reminded myself that: "I don't care about what these people think about me". It's been something I've been working on, and it seems to be helping. I used to be very very concerned about how people perceive me, but it's starting to fade away. More quickly than I expected, and all I'm doing is just thinking to myself: "I don't care about what these people think about me". Another thing I've been working on is being less sensative. Even if someone refers to me as a bastard/bitch/punk casually, I would get deeply deeply hurt. But recently, I've been trying to thicken my skin by just again telling myself "I don't care about what these people think about me". This helped me get through that game of poker fairly comfortably, but I still felt a bit awkward there just because the people I was playing with were all so ... cool. I'm not used to that.
After I was finished playing, instead of saying something like: "it was fun playing with you guys" I just sort of creeped away. I hated doing this because A: It can come off as rude to not aknowlege these people after playing with them, and B: it's a bit awkward for me to ignore them and just creep away. Ergh. I hate that. The thing is, I never really established myself as a talker at the table, so it would be weird for me to finally speak up and say something when I left. So I guess I need to work on that. It was sort of weird though. As I said, I hadn't established myself as a talker at the table, so no one was really expecting me to say anything. It was hard to find a break in conversation and just say something. Well, there is a semi awkward moment to share. I promised stories that would be enjoyable, right?
All in all, I think it was a great night. Probably the best series of social experiences I've had in a long time. At that poker table, I DEFINITELY realized that I'm REALLY missing out on a lot by being a social recluse. If I could more easily just talk with strangers and hang out, that would be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to my continued improvement.
Note: I think I changed tenses about 1million times in this post. If it sucks to read, I apologize for my poor writing skills. But I'm an engineering major writing more in numbers than letters
