What we need is a game plan

I'm only doing this now because I have developed a physical aversion to my work. Updating my blog, checking my email, they all give the illusion of accomplishment without making me go anywhere near the stack of orders I have to either send or get ready for pickup. Maybe the graduates in the photographs wouldn't understand my need to avoid them, but I'm trusting that everyone else will.

I need a life, in the worst kind of way. I need friends who don't live an ocean away, and a place where I can sit and hang out with these closer friends. Maybe in this imaginary world I would have someone to go to the zoo with. And there would be balloons, and birthday cake...and wait. I just described the birthday party I wanted when I was a kid. Either way, the fact remains that much as I love and am grateful for the friends who still make time for me when they're six hours ahead of me at all times, I work way too much. I can justify it because most of that work I can still do while talking online, but eventually everyone else will find better things to do with their time than sitting up at their computers to talk to me, and then I'll just turn into a bitter, lonely old woman. Happy people will shun me. I'll spend my evenings talking to cats. And then when I die none of my friends will be at the funeral because you're all too far away to get here. And somehow it all ends in the detruction of the universe, but I won't follow that train of thought any farther.

So short of hanging around in bars or joining a cult church, what is the best way for someone who isn't in school and doesn't work in an office with other people to make friends? I could start handing out candy to people on the street, with a business card attached to it saying, "Hi, my name is Amy. If you enjoyed your candy, please consider being my friend and hanging out with me on the weekends." What do you think?

I wasn't doing this for you anyway

Just in case the few people who read this were not aware of the fact: I'm still probably a fair bit heavier than I was the last time I saw you. I am not saying this to elicit sympathy, or to put anyone off, but it seems that my weight is something I'm going to have to post next to my age in any future encounters with fellow human beings.

Yes, I am rather angry at the moment. Everyone has a certain way that they deal with stress, depression, feeling like they don't have control of their life's direction. For better or worse, mine seems to be a tendency to overeat. I don't have an alcohol addiction, or a destructive relationship with men, or a propensity to cut myself, but many people would argue that letting myself get fat is the least socially acceptable of the options.

It's only been in the last 6 months or so that I've taken control back, so to speak. I haven't started a diet, or made grandiose plans to lose all my excess weight in three months just so I can show everyone, but I have begun a conscious effort to live a healthier life. It's part of a general plan, physical health, financial health, and most importantly emotional health. I've felt genuinely GOOD about myself for the first time in three years. I've also felt lonely, and so I took the terrifying step of attempting to meet someone socially.

Here's the thing, though....he liked me. He read my profile, saw my picture, we talked online and on the phone, and he really did like me. Not to belabor the point, but I make a really good impression. And my face it seems is not entirely unattractive. But we met in person, and this guy who thought I was wonderful and had started making plans for the next time we met before we'd even met the first time...well, he just disappeared. There were no warning signs, he was just gone.

I guess my ego is still too fragile to play this game. I'm not trying to be something I can't sustain for the rest of my life, but is it too much to ask that some guy, sometime, find me attractive? I'm witty, and intelligent, and incredibly nice...I have a great smile, and a nice rack...and I know it takes time to get to the point I'm trying to reach with my weight, but I'll be damned if I put my entire existence on hold until I reach some magical point where the world at large decides I'm worthy of having a life again!

Rant over, but at least now when you see me again, you can't say I didn't warn you.