But... WHY?

 Do you ever seriously wonder why you do things? Why you want to do things? Why you want to change things?

I have been thinking about how much my group of friends have changed over the last year and a half. The initial group I put together are now all guest stars in my life which means I see them once or twice in three-six months. Although a few of the cast are the same, about half of them are different, and I am now back into the single digits as far as friends I see frequently go. It made me think I needed to make more effort to branch out and become more social.


I had dinner at a friend's place one night and we were discussing why I want to be more social and honestly I guess I never thought about putting a reason into words. My goal is just to find people I can connect with through similar interests and activities. They said my goal isn't to be social then, it's just to find something particular. I think when I was younger, I did it to expose myself to different philosophies people had about life because all I had to go on was what my parents told me. Was the world as awful as they say it is? Are people as selfish and unkind? Why can I only see things negatively?

Chicago is pivotal to how I learn to live. I used to talk a lot with people much older than me and some of the advice I got from them changed the course of my life completely. The one person I remember meeting, I had a lot in common with. She was Burmese, she went to the University of the Pacific, she studied something practical like pharmacy, and she had a tough decision to make about family obligation and living her life. She told me her greatest regret was spending the best years of her life, her 20s and early 30s, taking care of her mom. Her other siblings left her with the responsibility and moved on with their own lives carefree. While she lived with her mother, she spent most of her time dealing with her mother's problems and tried hard to please her. By the time she left California for Illinois, she was in her mid thirties. I suppose she realized you can't live for someone, and you can't truly make someone happy,  it is something you have to do for yourself. Now, she had to go find herself.

Her story ran pretty parallel with mine and maybe if it weren't for her sharing her experience and story, I would have walked down that same road. That is why I find it very important for young adults to live away from home to build their identity, curiosity, and drive and direction for their life. It's hard to hear above the noise and voices of the authority figures inside you head, and at some point you realize you're mind is drowning and you need to do something about it.

I think there are lots of reasons for being social. Some of them are strong reasons and others are not so much. The most important reason is to learn from others and share thoughts and ideas. The other reasons are to learn how to deal with different types of people and work on conversational skills. I have been told it can help build confidence too but I don't think that's necessarily true in my case.

SOMETHING FUN

Some time last year I tried the Paleo diet but quit because I wasn't doing it for health reasons. I did it to do something with my sister. When she stopped writing in her paleo blog, and limited access to who could read it, I stopped doing it. PALEO BLOG. I really got involved because her writing in my opinion was terrible and the readers needed photos and jokes to keep reading on.