Friday, September 30, 2016

Friendliest Guy

            Throughout this past Thursday, September 29, I did my iExamen analysis and realized how much distance and caution I put between myself and others, even regardless of my intuition. I find myself only doing the minimum often with regard to my social interactions and greetings, only doing what is necessary.
            Most of my greetings and conversations seem to be in passing. For whatever reason I find myself distancing myself from people around me. Whenever I see people I know I tend to only greet them in response or not at all, and at the same time I never stop and make small talk. I glance in a different direction or make little eye contact. This is the same in regard to social media, I find myself ignoring texts and snapchats or responding the bare minimum. For the first three hours of my day, I didn’t have a conversation beyond checking if my roommate had an alarm set before I left for class. After that, I had a class with my one of my roommates so we made jokes while waiting for class to start but even then I found myself to be curt. A certain upperclassman was being sassy to my roommate and I claiming we did not know the band on her shirt, which I did (it was the Grateful Dead) and I found myself annoyed even after the class.
 The only time I find myself being kind or having and type of social charm is when I actually have to talk to people. I keep eye contact and usually I am genuinely interested in what they have to say. I found myself walking back with my roommate and a girl from our class and I was being fun and charming and she was laughing a lot but it was pretty draining and once I found myself back in my room I shut myself off again. 
The next social interaction was probably the worst of the day. A girl I’m friends with in my lab was continuously glancing at me and seemed to be upset, and she seemed to be upset about something other than the fact that I wasn’t sitting next to her. I felt like it was boyfriend related, but instead of checking in and seeing if she was ok I just played it off and decided it wasn’t really my place. A similar circumstance happened towards the end of the day when a neighbor came over, seeming eager to talk and encouraging me to be funny and charismatic but I stayed pretty silent until she made an awkward excuse to leave. Yet repeatedly my suitemates and my friends all regard me as friendly and social and are always looking for me to go out with them.
I pay a good amount of attention to clothes, and it seemed the same as normal. The preppy kids and the kids who don' care and wear athletic shorts and sweatpants seem to make up most of the population. Personally, if I wear sweats to class I feel like a bum, but a lot of my friends do it and I don't judge.
My hour without my phone seemed to go by quickly. I actually have an app on my phone that tracks my usage and my daily average is around an hour and a half. I found myself doing the same thing where I studied and took breaks my stretching or daydreaming. It wasn't very noticeable that I wasn't allowed to use technology. 

I realize how much of an effect I have on the people around me with how aloof I seem. Although it isn’t anything personal that makes me act one way or another, I feel as though I should try to force or find myself in more social interactions. Whenever I am in a social interaction I am usually socially appealing it seems, so I should stop trying to weasel out of every conversation. All the intuitions I have that tell me to do better and be more outgoing with my friends are right. There’s nothing more important than the people surrounding you, without them, there really isn’t much to life.

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