Pity Party

I guess I'll just make another quick update...though "update" implies that I have follow-up news from something I posted previously. Or maybe it doesn't...or maybe I shouldn't be so pedantic. In any event, I'm currently in day two of my three day Martin Luther King Day weekend, and while I'm thrilled to get away from work, I can't say I have fun (or any) plans for the time off. Sure, I did my laundry and food shopping and caught up on some e-mails and watched my minor backlog of DVDs and Blu-rays, either from Netflix or recently-purchased (Miss Julie [1951]: not bad; The Mark of Zorro [1940]: surprisingly entertaining; Friday Night Lights [2004]: still a great movie and gets better every time I see it). But do I have plans to meet up with friends, go on a second date with that girl, and/or "put myself out there"? No, no, and no.

You know, I think I've underestimated the sacrifice I made to move from New York to Los Angeles after my senior year of college. Since I moved here in 2004, I've heard fellow transplants talk about how difficult it is to meet people again and start a whole new life in a new place, and I've always somewhat pooh-poohed that position. Sure, I've had my difficulties in establishing my place here in Los Angeles, socially-speaking, but I tended to feel that the issue was overstated...starting over somewhere new isn't that hard. I think it's been over the last six months or so that I've really started to realize just how difficult it's been. I think I was deluded for a while, what with my G4 group of friends (including eventual BFF Jennie) and then the friends at my current workplace.

But for a while now, I've realized that I've been missing that true core group of friends. I sort of had that for a bit at G4 with Val, Hollie, Torie and Jennie, but it wasn't that "core" dynamic, and gradually, that group dissolved. And now, with no group to call my own, I've been feeling lonelier than ever before. Sure, I have friends out here, but it's nothing like the days of hanging out with my old friends.

That's not to say that I regret moving to Los Angeles, as I don't at all. Clearly, this is where I need to be to do what I want to do, and I've made inroads and contacts that wouldn't have been possible in New York, but it's all taken a toll on my social life. A few years ago, that didn't matter so much to me, but lately, I guess I've been learning that, really, no man is an island.

Of course, that's also not to say that my core group of friends in New York would have lasted forever...I mean, they all still hang out with one another, but would my occasional isolation have been accepted for much longer? I admit to having periods of time wherein I simply don't want to see or speak to anyone, and that never really went over so well back in the day. Like this weekend...I just don't want to see or speak to anyone. I'm metaphorically boarded up in my apartment, watching episodes of Frasier, trying to forget about the monotony of work, the day-to-day neuroses, the fact that the blind date girl never wrote me back. I think even if I lived in New York amidst all of my old friends right now, I'd probably still be metaphorically hiding under the bed.

I can't blame it all on the blind date girl, but that is pretty upsetting. Clearly, her last e-mail (about how stressed she was with grad school applications and how I should contact her again in January) was actually the brush-off e-mail I had feared it to be. And of course, in a wretched twist of fate, I now can't even check my damn e-mails...we had been communicating via my work e-mail, as I'm able to access it from home, except when my password needs to be changed, as that can only be done from the office...and of course, my password expired this morning, so I can't even check to see if she's responded without going into the office. Fuck you, irony...or if this is some higher being's way of telling me to stop obsessing, fuck you, too.

Speaking of cruel irony, why do the fates continue to mock me at every turn? After pining for Jamie for about a year and a half, we've now settled into being close friends, which in and of itself is quite nice. However, I now have Jamie coaching me on how to get girls and helping me out...which, again, is wonderful, but it does lead to times where she tries to build up my confidence by telling me what a "great catch" I am. Ha. That combined with the bitter fact that "persistence" was the key to her heart with regards to her current boyfriend just makes me want to...well, hide from the world in my apartment.

I guess I'm getting a bit too self-pitying here...so I'll stop (well, I'll stop writing about it and just go back to living it). Meanwhile, it's back to JDate for me...I've been away from it for a month or so, so I hope there's a whole new batch of girls to ignore my messages. My God...I'm even considering JDate-related speed dating. Am I that undateable? Speed dating is for losers in movies or satisfied people who "just want to have a laugh." What the hell is so wrong with me?