ljplicease | from here to there

I often feel out of place. Sometimes it goes away and sometimes it sticks around. Nobody likes not understanding the rules of a given social situation, and everyone has different ways of dealing with that. For me it's bad enough that I tend to avoid new situations and stick with what I know. For example, I tend to eat at the same restaurants, rather than risk not knowing what to order, or if this place takes credit card, or a thousand other things that I am entirely capable of dealing with. I don't think I have ever revealed that piece of information to anyone before! I am usually pretty good at hiding just how not okay I am with being in new situations. I think if someone found out that would be even worse for me, than being in a new situation. It seems pretty silly when I write it out like that, but there it is.

It's entirely different when I'm with people I am comfortable with. Friends are like a force multiplier with me. They turn me into someone different, they make me more confident and powerful! I feel totally different. The truth is that I have all of that inside of me, and sometimes if I work really hard I can even express those amazing powers when I am on my own, but it is hard to do.

In the first grade I was really popular for some reason. As proof, I invented a planet that I came from called Shashars. It wasn't long before pretty much the entire class was also from Shashars. It was then (sometime in the early eighties) that I felt social situations were something that I could handle for that last time ever!

Moving to New Mexico was a wrenching experience for me. New Mexico is a wonderful place and I love it dearly, but it was hard for me to find friends and fit in. It took me about 12 years to find a group of people who I felt comfortable with, and whom I liked. It was my senior year, and I belonged to a geeky clique of friends, pretty low on the bullshit high school totem pole, but they were people I liked so I didn't really care. Just then, when I had everything figured out, I had to go off to college. Everything fell apart again. My existing friendships mostly dissolved, I felt betrayed, I was depressed, I was on my own in a strange place and I got into some very self destructive behaviors. I wasn't even very good at school and I didn't work very hard until the last couple of years of college, when I managed to turn things around and bury myself in my work. I'd say at the expense of my social life, but I didn't really have a social life to dispense with. I had a couple of really good friends, but aside from seeing movies at the dollar theatre there wasn't much. Despite all that, after four years I had sort of figured it out enough that I could at least handle life in college.

Of course that is always a sign that things are about to change. You knew that right?

I had to get out of my home town and I didn't really pick a place so much as New York picked me. I got a job working for The Company. The people I hung out with at first were not people that I felt comfortable with. It made my first year in New York somewhat unbearable. About a year after I started at The Company a new hire started and we were going to share an office. I invited her to come hiking with some people that I didn't even know and had never even met. That new hire (who, as it turns out, only shared an office with me for about a month) and some of the people I met on that after work hide turned out to be some of my closest friends today. It didn't happen quickly or over night, but over time they became really good friends. I wouldn't continue to go back to New York now, if it weren't for those people.

New York, even with good friends, was not always good to me though. Sometimes I was happy. Sometimes I was unhappy. It sounds weird to write it here now, but at one point, I was so depressed that I needed someone to tell me what to do. One “new situation” that I do not like dealing with at all is going to the doctor. So I avoided going to the doctor for anything, even a checkup for the first four years or so that I was on my own. It sort of worked out that when I was in this state where I needed to be told what to do that that former office mate friend of mine told me to go to the doctor. The doctor referred me to a therapist. That helped. It was a really hard time for me and it was the deepest depression that I'd ever felt. In some ways it was a good time for me though, because I was so low that I was willing to try things that I never had before. I felt so bad that I tried just about anything I could think of to make myself feel better. I don't mean self destructive stuff like drugs and alcohol though, I mean weird shit like using light bulbs that emitted daylight balanced light because I had this theory that I was suffering from seasonal affective disorder. Some of the things that I tried stuck, and some of it didn't. I think a big part of it was just my determination that I was going to feel better. I think that the placebo effect was a factor as well. I think leaving The Company was a factor in improving my mood. The environment inside any organization that size varies a lot from place to place, and there were a lot of good things about the organization that I was in (the people I worked with were really sharp), but because of the way it was being managed it lurched forward under a cloud of negativity, as good people were being turned to cynicism.

Moving to Australia was not a silver bullet though. The next place I worked, Company 2, was a step down in a lot of ways, but especially in terms of cynicism and can't-do attitudes. Being closer to family was amazing. Going to New Mexico on vacation with a few friends changed my life, but only because I was at a point in my life that I was ready for it. I realized the other day during a team meeting that I am finally at that point at the place I am working now, at s-mart, where I am starting to feel comfortable with the people around me (my spidey sense should be telling me that means it is time to move again).

Last year at OSDC for one of the five minute lighting talks, this guy got up and asked (this, btw- has nothing to do with Open Source or the conference) everyone who had dealt with serious depression to raise there hand. Lots of people raised there hand, including, I noticed, Larry Wall. I know it sounds pretty silly, but the idea that somebody as upbeat, chipper, successful and popular in the open source community as Larry Wall has to deal with depression made me feel a lot better. Obviously that was the point of the “talk” – just to say hey it's okay, you're not alone.

I guess maybe that is a little bit my point too. People are usually surprised when I tell them I have trouble dealing with social situations because, for one thing I am very good at hiding it, and for another I can seem extroverted when I'm with my close friends, and of course anyone I am going to tell this to is going to be a close friend. Some things still remain very difficult. Like riding a bus I haven't been on before, signing up for a mobile phone with a new carrier, or going out to a new restaurant. Stuff which is easy, but which isn't. I overcome it sometimes, and sometimes I manage it. Either way, I am actually doing pretty well.