Chris Collins :: a personal journal » interaction

the 2009 purge

cj69collins — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:28:40 +0000

I have to hand it to social not-working devs. they always seem to try to come-up with new ways of doing the same things as the popular sites. the problem with that is that they never really live up to the expectation set by those popular sites. what is worse, even popular sites that do not improve with the times can fall victim to the effect. eventually, as quickly as things grow, they decline. pownce, jaiku and others fade into oblivion.
I am one to try just about anything. eventually, though, I get overhelmed by the numbers or bored by the offering. to that end, purged a number of links I felt were not offering me much of anything. Friendfeed, hi5, myspace, tumblr, livejournal accounts were all canceled in the last fortnight, along with the accounts of a number of smaller services. I never connected at myspace like I do at facebook; I connected even less at hi5, which seemed predominantly hispanics; I connected even less with friendfeed; livejournal and tumblr were repeats of this blog or twitter, which seemed a waste. Most of the smaller twitter wannabes just never cut it. What profiles I could not close, I simply walked away from. tagged made the cut, since there is some interaction. plurk made the cut, just barely, for the same reason. Both socialvibe and realjock have purpose beyond social not-working. the hookup sites entice me, yet scare me still. all in all, the purge was good, since I know predominantly focus on two site, facebook and twitter. I am even using twitter clients Syinx on Mac and PockeTwit on Blackjack. I will be less enticed to try the new service when the old seems to do the trick.

a life less planned

cj69collins — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 01:01:21 +0000

I wake weekday at 06h30. I go to work for 08h00. I have lunch at 11h30. I leave work at 17h00. I have regular meetings. To take vacation, I need to plan the days well enough in advance. Every five weeks, I am on-call for off-hours IT support. I get paid every other week on a Thursday. Three times a week, I go to the gym, which I must schedule up to two weeks in advance to get a time conducive to my continued employment. I must pay my bills by a specific date of the month. My car needs regularly schedule maintenance. On top of all of that, I usually have a routine by which I conduct my off-hours. Usually, this involves a fair amount of social not-wokring at specific sites, depending on the day of week and my mood.

This routine, I believe, has resulted in weekends that are, at best semi-dull. I cannot just go to the shore, go to the casino, make a day trip into Philadelphia, or a weekend trip into NYC. This is about equal parts lack of incentive to really do anything fun, ‘considering’ the schedule for things I will be doing or need to do, and whether the money and time spent in maing fun happen is spent well. [i.e. will I really have fun?] I have no place to just ‘hang out’ for an afternoon or evening, just to be social and sociable in real life, to meet people for real, to meet real people. While, I will admit, I am seeking more order at work, I have come to the conclusion that I have too much order, obligation, regimentation, schedule and/or plan in my life. Now that I feel I am getting my social legs under me, really for the first time in my life, I have less incentive to have fun. As I lose the fear of doing things ‘because I will not be socially accepted while doing them,’ I feel a loss of incentive to do them because either ‘its time is past’ or, worse yet, ‘my time is past.’ More and more, I am getting bored trying to have fun, and that is because, I feel, I am no longer feel the spontaneity which allowed me to get over my fears and have fun. Things are just too well planned for me, and I do not like it.

relationship disoriented

cj69collins — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:53:48 +0000

I believe I have discovered the reason why, approaching my 42d birthday, I am still single and largely unsocial. It is not something of which I am proud. It may though be indicative of the way my life has turned. The realization happened at work.

I have one project on my plate. The problem I am now having with this project probably can be summed this way – I am poor at interpersonal relationships. I assume too much from others. I expect them to know what I know. When asked questions, I tend not to be either clear or forward with the answers. I tend to like asking questions more than being asked them. I am impatient. I tend not to exert myself properly, since I rarely know what limits I have. I try escaping from confrontation. I speak as much, if not more, from emotion than intelligence. I would much rather do for myself than depend on others to do. I tend not to be a proper listener. I may expect answers from my own narrative, taken from my own experience. I also tend to impose on others, yet get angry when being imposed upon. I tend to project too much pressure on myself.

Add to that my wont for shying away from those who are too aggressive, forward or emotionally forth-coming, my lack of desire ‘to interrupt’ or ‘enter a conversation without invitation,’ my tendency to be aloof, and my inability to hold a conversation without provocation, and my disdain for even the appearance I ‘need’ to maintain a conversation, it is amazing anyone wants to even be associated with me.

To my credit, I have become to overcome some of those thing in my more regular interactions. It takes some time for me to warm up to someone, but, I do. Still, I am where I am because of my relationships with others, and that is largely because of my inability to manage a relationship, even on the simplest, most platonic, or most business-like level.