We are all of us social animals
Pain Spectrum – red again, and pretty deep at that, but this is mostly due to babysitting our wonderful 1 1/2 year old niece on Saturday. Babies. Cute, cuddly, and capable of debilitating you with one well-placed kick.
BM/RD Index – 12
Fuzz meter – 8
Hi all. Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I opted to do more physical than mental activities last week, and I haven’t built up the strength yet to do both. Moving doesn’t stop me from thinking, however, and one of the things I’ve been mulling over has been that cocktail party. Not because anything went wrong (and thank you again to everyone for all your suggestions), but because I had been so worried about it. See, I used to be fine at social events. I grew up going to them. Events and dinners and the like were something that, while never truly enjoyable, was at least no big deal. The secret was not to worry, and not to care what others thought of you. Oh, and of course, not to make an ass of yourself. It was relatively simple.
Problem was, somewhere over the last few years I forgot what I had taught myself; I forgot that I could be social. Fortunately, I remembered again once I was there and ended up having an enjoyable evening. But I have been so focused these last few years on maintaining my mobility that I missed the fact that being ill makes me vulnerable to losing more than just that. I joke about turning into a recluse, without really thinking about what a recluse means: “a person who lives an unsocial life”. That is not actually someone I want to be.
Fighting for mobility will always trump remembering how to talk to strangers: I can always re-teach myself how to interact with others, but if my legs go, they’re gone. Still, it would be wrong to downplay how important having a social life is to one’s well-being. I felt good about myself after the cocktail party. I enjoyed meeting new people and saw that I was able to hold it together better than I had hoped. This, in turn, gave me the strength to go out and about more than I would have last week. In short, being out and about helped me to go out and about. Again, something I used to know but had forgotten since the car accident.
There is no quick fix to this: I am not going to start going to clubs and social groups and such: I cannot be a go-out-everyday type of girl. But it has caused me to examine how I interact with others, and I can see that I’ve regressed a bit. I worry more about how I am perceived. I am shyer and less likely to speak in a group. And when I do talk, I tend to censor myself more than I used to (and to those out there who scoff at this, well, obviously, I am not talking about how I interact with you). I don’t think that any severe damage has been done - and I am caustic enough that holding back occasionally can even be seen as a good thing - but it is one more thing that I need to be aware of. I had to fight hard to become comfortable with myself. I don’t feel like losing that out of sheer neglect.
BM/RD Index – 12
Fuzz meter – 8
Hi all. Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I opted to do more physical than mental activities last week, and I haven’t built up the strength yet to do both. Moving doesn’t stop me from thinking, however, and one of the things I’ve been mulling over has been that cocktail party. Not because anything went wrong (and thank you again to everyone for all your suggestions), but because I had been so worried about it. See, I used to be fine at social events. I grew up going to them. Events and dinners and the like were something that, while never truly enjoyable, was at least no big deal. The secret was not to worry, and not to care what others thought of you. Oh, and of course, not to make an ass of yourself. It was relatively simple.
Problem was, somewhere over the last few years I forgot what I had taught myself; I forgot that I could be social. Fortunately, I remembered again once I was there and ended up having an enjoyable evening. But I have been so focused these last few years on maintaining my mobility that I missed the fact that being ill makes me vulnerable to losing more than just that. I joke about turning into a recluse, without really thinking about what a recluse means: “a person who lives an unsocial life”. That is not actually someone I want to be.
Fighting for mobility will always trump remembering how to talk to strangers: I can always re-teach myself how to interact with others, but if my legs go, they’re gone. Still, it would be wrong to downplay how important having a social life is to one’s well-being. I felt good about myself after the cocktail party. I enjoyed meeting new people and saw that I was able to hold it together better than I had hoped. This, in turn, gave me the strength to go out and about more than I would have last week. In short, being out and about helped me to go out and about. Again, something I used to know but had forgotten since the car accident.
There is no quick fix to this: I am not going to start going to clubs and social groups and such: I cannot be a go-out-everyday type of girl. But it has caused me to examine how I interact with others, and I can see that I’ve regressed a bit. I worry more about how I am perceived. I am shyer and less likely to speak in a group. And when I do talk, I tend to censor myself more than I used to (and to those out there who scoff at this, well, obviously, I am not talking about how I interact with you). I don’t think that any severe damage has been done - and I am caustic enough that holding back occasionally can even be seen as a good thing - but it is one more thing that I need to be aware of. I had to fight hard to become comfortable with myself. I don’t feel like losing that out of sheer neglect.
posted by KS at 10:10 AM
1 Comments:
interesting post. i wonder how much physical mobility is co-related to "social mobility", not the socio-economic kind, where you move up in the world, but the water bug kind, where you scoot around the pond and check out what the other water bugs are up to.
and what does our vaunted information revolution have to do with being socially mobile? are you more mobile because you can reach out to people in new ways (cheap long distance phone calls, e-mail, this blog)? so you haven't "lost" social mobility, you've changed the ways you interact.
but the old maxim tells us that fitnes requires exercising a diversity of muscle groups, right? it sounds like the cocktail party was a good reminder to not only hit the weights, but to include some cardio in your workout, too.
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