social anxiety

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Five for Friday

It’s Friday and I am posting this on Friday, March 15; you may not see this until June for all Feedly cares, but I don’t think I have any control over that. This is kind of a cranky way to begin a blog post, so, as I say to Carla: Let’s try that again.

It’s Friday! I am coming off a night of broken sleep (child coming in at three, returning to bed around four, husband waking up for the day at five thirty), so let’s have some Friday bullets. 

1. Are you as steeped in the Kate Middleton drama as I am? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a) bless you and b) here is a really thorough explainer. If you are In It, I highly recommend finding a friend who is similarly obsessed so you can text her memes and links to conspiracy theories at all hours of the day. My personal opinion is that Kate is recovering from surgery, probably doesn’t look or feel her best, and just wants to recover in private until Easter as previously planned and communicated by the Palace. BUT, simmering in that dark gross part of me that enjoys drama, especially when it feels very removed from my own boring non-royal life, I am kind of hoping that someone is pregnant with someone’s love child.

2. What kind of snacks do you keep stocked in your house? I ask because we have become friendly with our new neighbors and they invite us over all the time for all manner of things. While I am a little intimidated by reciprocating with A Real Meal (they are incredible cooks and bakers, and every time we’ve been invited to their house the food has been astonishing in both quantity and quality), I am ostensibly fine with having them over for drinks and snacks. The other day, the kids went sledding and we had them over for impromptu cocoa. Luckily, we had cocoa mix in the pantry, and even more luckily the mix had tiny marshmallows, and even more luckily, we had an unopened bottle of spray whipped cream because one of the neighbor kids informed me that he really likes whipped cream on his cocoa in a tone so grave I understood him to mean that something dire would happen if no whipped cream appeared. But then there are all these kids and their parent in my house and I realized I DON’T HAVE ANY SNACKS. It’s not that I don’t enjoy snacks; it’s that I enjoy them too much. We managed to scrape together some muffins I had in the freezer and some individual bags of chips and veggie straws that we had leftover from some party or other, so no one starved. But it made me feel like I need to have at least some snacks on hand. But what?!? I’m not crazy about having a bunch of cookies around, because they either go uneaten or get devoured in two seconds. If we have chips, I will eat the chips. Cheese and crackers aren’t big among the elementary school set, and it’s not like I can have an emergency brie on hand for last minute guests (or can I?). Fresh fruits and veggies, yes, great, and I try to have those around as much as possible, but we don’t eat enough of them to have a ready supply in the fridge at all times. Occasionally I panic buy a bag of clementines, but at least a third of them inevitably go bad before we can eat them. So: shelf stable snacks that appeal to kids and adults but are not so appealing that my family will eat them before we have guests. Is this a thing? 

3. In vanity news, I have been Influenced to buy several things lately. I really like this very inexpensive multi-use highlighter stick. Of course I cannot find the video that originally persuaded me that this was an essential tool in my (non-existent) makeup game, but I like dabbing it on the inner and outer aspects of my eyes and swiping it below my eyebrows for a little bit of lively glow. Totally worth $2.94. The other thing I’ve already tried enough times to recommend it is this bronzing mousse. The weather is edging ever closer to summer, and I don’t want to scare the new neighbors with my fish-belly legs, so I’ve been practicing in the hope that I can add a little lifelike color to my skin before I appear in public in running shorts. I am always on a quest for the perfect fake tan, and this is the closest I’ve gotten. The things I like best about it are: a) It’s dark when it goes on, so you can SEE where you are applying it, and you can also see if you are introducing streaks to your thighs or stomach before the streaks have become one with your skin. b) While it has a scent, as all tanning products inevitably do, it strikes me as much fainter and less objectionable than any other tanning product I’ve ever used. c) The resulting tan is darker than my normal skin tone, but not so dark that it screams FAKE TAN. (I use this tanning mitt to apply it to my body which works really well and helps prevent streaking.) Once again, I have no idea which account suggested this tanning mousse, but I am a fan.

4. One of my current parenting goals is to provide more opportunities for Carla to spend time with her friends. I think I’ve mentioned before that I hate playdates. They fill me with anxiety, because they are both forced social time – sometimes with parents I don’t know well – and because I have no idea how to deal with more than just my one child. For better or for worse, that’s just how I am, and so we haven’t had a ton of playdates. But now that Carla is older, playdates presumably no longer require that social element AND the kids are old enough that I can give them a lot more independence. I used to agonize over how I was going to entertain two whole children, and so I’d gravitate toward things in my comfort zone, like baking projects or crafts. Unfortunately, those things require a lot of prep and supervision and clean up, so they aren’t relaxing or easy. But now I can pretty much let the kids go off and play together. Sometimes we all take a walk outside, and I’m always happy to take a walk, even if the kids ask me to pretend I’m not with them.

Even though playdates are, in many ways, easier now, I still of course have anxiety about them. I find myself fretting about planning An Activity, just in case. I find myself worrying about what happens if the kids get into a fight or misbehave or want food (it always comes back to snacks!) or want to be on screens the whole time.

This is so silly! When I was a kid, I don’t think my friends and I EVER had An Activity. We just went and played Barbies or roller skated in my basement or played school or ran around outside or played house. I can’t even imagine asking my mom or a friend’s mom for ideas. And snacks were not provided by the parent! We scrounged up our own snacks, and I don’t even remember a parent being present for any snacking. In fact, part of the fun of going to someone’s house was checking out their snacks. (Not as fun: eating any sort of meal at a friend’s house, because they had different foods than I was used to and different rules. THAT filled me with anxiety.) I loved my friend J’s house because they had an entire drawer full of candy, and you could just… eat candy when you wanted to! J, notably, was pretty uninterested in the candy. I loved my friend R’s house because her garage freezer was STOCKED with popsicles. At my house, we always had little bags of chips or Zingers in the pantry and Dilly Bars in the freezer and pickles in the fridge. (R and I used to each eat a pickle when we were at my house.) So I am guessing that kids DON’T CARE either what they do or what they eat at playdates. They will figure it out. And yet. We have two playdates on the schedule in the next few weeks and I am already stressing about it. I am planning to be Mean Mom and put a ban on screens, but beyond that… I don’t know what to do or what not to do. Wow, I wish I could chill out about this. 

5. You know something that always feels like magic to me, even though it’s science? Topology. Various algorithms keep serving me videos of topological experiments – because I keep watching them when they appear in my feed – and my mind cannot grasp the mathematics/physics. My dad taught Carla how to make a mobius strip and even seeing him create it with my own eyes doesn’t help me understand how or why it works. It’s witchcraft.

What are you up to this weekend, internet? And, more importantly, what kind of snacks will you be eating?

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Friends Through Writing and Bloggers vs Non Bloggers

I have some bloggy questions for you today. But what inspired this post is a little interaction I had with my husband, who is a Non Blogger. As in, he doesn’t blog and while he may read a few blogs here and there, he doesn’t ever comment on blogs and sees them purely as informative. 

Earlier this week, I had the absolutely delightful thrill of connecting with a longtime blog friend. That night, when my family sat down to dinner, my husband asked how my day was, and I went on at length about how fun it was not just to interact with this person, but to see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices. 

“You’d never met in person before?” Carla wanted to know. 

Nope.

“How did you get to know each other?” my husband asked.

Just… through the internet. 

But that wasn’t enough of an answer for either of them. They were super curious about not just how I’d met this person, but how we’d built a friendship online. For reference, my husband is Not Online; he doesn’t have any social media presence at all. And my daughter is a baby*, so, same. 

If I go back to the very beginning of bloggy time, which for me was 2009, I think the possibility of friendships is what prompted me to start blogging. At the time, I was working remotely from my apartment, and I was the primary breadwinner for our household. My husband and I had just moved to a new city for his medical residency. I didn’t really know anyone and I didn’t have the temperament to go meet people in the wild. But I had spent two-ish years reading a bunch of wedding planning blogs, which led to finding and reading people’s personal blogs. I was a lurker and never commented, but I could see in the comments how people were getting to know one another. This was very appealing to me and my personal situation. 

So I started a blog, and began commenting on other blogs. Slowly, and despite the fact that I was semi-anonymous online (I am shy and pretty private, which may or may not surprise you), my online community grew. 

Speaking of anonymity: My husband knows I have a blog; my parents do as well, and one college friend. (And now Carla, whose primary knowledge of blogs is via really terrible sitcoms.) But that’s really it. If the topic comes up, I may share with offline friends that I have a book blog, but I try to keep my online world private from my offline world. WHY this separation is important is something I have never fully been able to articulate. Maybe something about feeling freer to be myself online when I know I’m not being observed by people I might see during a playdate or around the holiday table? This blog is a space where I can talk about only what interests me, whether it’s weird interactions at the UPS Store, or too many words about shampoo, or rants about stupid rules, or fretting about the great unknowable job of parenthood. I don’t have to discuss politics or make intelligent commentary about world events or craft beautiful prose. It’s my space and I can fill it with mundanity and silliness and whining. The people who read it are here despite – or because of? – the subject matter, so it feels comfortable to keep going in this vein. I don’t feel any pressure to Write Important Things or be succinct or have fewer rambling sentences. 

I admit, I have sometimes felt a little weird about posting certain things with the knowledge that my mother or husband could be reading. Not that I am in any way different online than I am off, with the possible exception being that perhaps I try a little harder to be funny in my posts than I do in person. Also, I talk a LOT more when the talking is via words on a page rather than verbal utterings. But it’s not like there’s anything secret going on here. I’m not a covert Flat Earther or anything. 

All this is beside the point, which is community. I blog for the community. To keep in touch with people, and learn about their dogs and their kiddos and their aspirations and their frets and their passions and their own everyday putterings. And I feel like I’ve found that community. Twice, now – once before the days of Twitter, which I blame, perhaps unreasonably, for the sharp decline in blogging in the later half of the last decade, and again in the past few years, with a handful of stalwart bloggers who’ve bridged the distance between the two. I love that some of those friendships have bloomed beyond the confines of our separate blogs.

But even though I have had this experience, I found myself really struggling to explain to my husband and child how I’d developed a friendship with people I’d never met. How could I KNOW such a person? How had we made the leap from blog reader / blog commenter to friends? 

I don’t know. Maybe it seems strange, to a non-blogger, that you can develop a real relationship with someone purely through written communication. That you can come to know a person, simply by what they choose to post online. That you can form a relationship that’s as genuine as any friendship formed offline. 

Maybe some of us simply communicate better via the written word. I feel so strongly that this is true for me. When speaking with people in person, I trip over my tongue, or the words cling together in a way that changes my intended meaning and I end up kicking myself later for not getting my point across accurately or well. I struggle to keep up with the flow of conversation, to take part in a way that doesn’t feel lagging or stilted. There’s none of that in writing. I can think things through. Usually I can go back and revise and make sure I’m saying things the way I want to say them. When I respond to your post, or your comment, there’s nothing distracting me or making me nervous. If there’s more to say, or things to clarify, I can follow up in an email. 

One of my dearest offline-world friends is also a friend-through-writing, even though we have also met many times in person. He and I worked together at my last full-time job. While I was in the home office, he worked remotely, from a different state, and it was several months before I met him in person. My first introduction to him was via a series of long emails he wrote me, outlining things he thought I might want to know, describing the position as it had been before I’d arrived, and laying out some things he thought we might work on together in the future. It was informative and provided such insight into the way his mind works, the way he approaches things, the meticulous and thoughtful nature of his personality. And, although we did talk on the phone and in person many times over the years, our primary method of communication was email. Even though we have both since left that company, we have remained good friends. We still communicate a LOT through email, although we also have regular Zoom chats. 

Meaningful, real relationships can grow through writing alone. I’m sure people had similarly strong friendships back in the days of letter writing – and how much more slowly those friendships must have formed! (Can you imagine pouring your heart out in a blog post, aching for commiseration or advice, and then having to wait for the postal service to deliver your post and then wait even longer for your correspondent to respond?) But I imagine it does seem strange to those who have never experienced it.

I don’t know if I fully addressed my husband’s curiosity about blog friendships. But his interest made me wonder about you, and your blogging experience. Would you share your experience with me? Here are some questions to get the words flowing. (The first few questions are for bloggers, but there are some questions in there for non bloggers as well.) Also, please do not feel the need to be succinct in your answers. I am a huge fan of novel-length comments; never hide your wordiness light under a bushel around here. 

Questions for Bloggers

  1. Do you have a blog, and if so what is your blog url? 
  2. How long have you been blogging?
  3. Why did you start a blog? 
  4. Do people in your offline life read your blog?
  5. Do you tell people you have a blog?
  6. Have you ever met a blogger in the offline world?
  7. What do you like best about blogging?

Questions for Non Bloggers

  1. Approximately how many blogs do you read?
  2. Do you comment on all the blogs you read?
  3. Why do you seek out blogs (vs or in addition to other, more formal sources)?
  4. Have you ever met a blogger in the offline world?
  5. Would you ever consider writing your own blog?
  6. If you at one time had a blog (especially one I loved reading), what made you stop posting and how do I persuade you to start blogging again?

Okay, I want all the deets.

And, in case it isn’t clear, I love knowing you. I appreciate your reading the nonsense I post here, and the support and kindness and advice and commiseration you offer. Thank you so much for being here and making this blogging thing such a satisfying, meaningful part of my life.

* Not a literal baby.

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here. 

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Things I Wish I Loved (or at Least Liked)

I am shamelessly borrowing this post idea from Elisabeth. 

Tomatoes. Tomatoes are everywhere, in everything. Life would be so much easier if I liked them.

Speaking out loud in groups of more than two people. Most people seem capable of speaking up in groups – whether out at coffee with a few friends or in a meeting or standing in an elevator. NOT ME. My heart pounds and my head swims just at the thought that I might open my mouth. And if I do manage to say something, my words come out all wrong and sometimes I stutter and my face gets all red and I rush through whatever it was I was trying to say, eliminating key context that would help make my point. Oh how I wish I could have even just a LITTLE CHILL when speaking to more than two people!

Dogs. *HEAR ME OUT* I hope you know that I love YOUR dog. I do. I want to see all the photos of your dog, and hear all the anecdotes, and if I visited you I would pet and snuggle your dog. I show my daughter pictures of your dog so often she can now differentiate them: “Is that Rex?” “Oh, is that Hannah?” “Charlie is so cute!” I have a soft spot in my heart for all animals, cockroaches excluded. And maybe snakes. But I don’t love dogs. I can appreciate them, I can admire them, I can enjoy them through their owners’ eyes or the eyes of my dog-crazy child. But I don’t love them. I don’t like licking. I don’t like wet noses. I don’t like drooling. I don’t like the idea of an outside creature bringing the outdoors into my home. I don’t like the idea of picking up poop. I think when you love dogs, these things become part of the package. And I just don’t love them. But oh, how I wish I did. If I loved dogs, we could own a dog and I would be happy about it. 

Pedicures. I think pedicures are such a fun, luxurious indulgence. But I find them so uncomfortable! My feet are very sensitive, and pretty much everything except the warm water soak and the warm towel wrap are verging on painful for me. Plus, I find myself worrying all the time about dangerous bacteria and whether I’m going to develop gangrene or pick up a flesh eating bacterium or something equally horrific from inadequately cleansed tools. 

Group events. Most people I know love parties and gatherings. But I find even smallish groups to be thoroughly exhausting. I overanalyze everything about them from what I will wear to who I can talk to, to where to park and whether there will be food. And then I spend the whole time feeling like I’m on the fringe of conversation, that no one wants to talk to me, that I have nothing interesting to say, that I look weird and stand awkwardly and can’t move my arms in a human manner. I get overstimulated and overwhelmed and have no idea how to keep up with the pace of conversation. It is awful. And then afterward I feel drained and reeling and want to crawl into a cave for days until everything feels calm and safe again. 

Letting other people cook in my kitchen. I am a control enthusiast in the extreme and prefer that things in my kitchen happen MY way. I am insufferable, I know. My kind and generous mother-in-law, for whom “making food” is a love language, will be eternally baffled by this facet of my personality. “Just let her make you dinner!” you may be thinking. But the very thought of it fills me with anxiety.  

Sharing food. JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD and neither do I. And people who do share food find this personally offensive. It would just be easier if I didn’t care. 

The beach. Sand adheres to me like a persistent infection. Everything is hot. The sand and ocean stink. Too many people. Things lurking unseen in the watery depths. NO THANK YOU times a million. But the beach is such a quintessential summer experience, and it would be nice if I didn’t feel angry and grumbly every time it’s broached.

Bridgerton, Yellowstone, and West Wing. Since this list is rapidly devolving into a catalog of my anxieties, I will switch to TV. These shows are universally beloved, and I just cannot get into any of them. I have total pop culture FOMO, and would love to love these shows.

Do you and I share any wish-I-liked items? What’s one thing that would make your life easier if you liked it?

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here.