I am absolutely terrible at keeping in touch. I'm really sorry. There is nothing I have tried that actually makes me better at this. I have been able to identify some of the problems with myself that makes this seemingly simple task feel practically impossible. I'm no good at attacking these problems head-on, but perhaps they will give some insight into why I am so awful at keeping in touch (and by that I mean hopefully it will excuse me and make me a little less easy to blame).
Part One: Time Is An Illusion
And I am immune to said illusion. Alright, that may sound super dramatic for what I mean. Essentially what I mean is that I have almost no ability to perceive time. I have been sitting in my computer chair for what feels like roughly 20 minutes programming before I started typing this. I've been sitting here for well over three hours now. And I know what most of you are thinking: Oh, you can perceive time you silly! Everybody gets lost in their craft! Everybody has moments when time flies by!
Every moment is a time when time flies by. I lose hours out a day like a Swiss cheese bucket loses water. It doesn't matter if I'm programming, drawing, sitting completely still, trying to keep track of time, being active, being passive, talking to people, whatever. I have no concept of time in my head and it throws me terribly off balance.
What makes this worse is that since time always seems to be moving at different speeds I remember things that happen in different days happening in the same day. I can't remember what days are what or how many have passed. At one point in my life I was trying to figure myself out after a rough breakup with an ex girlfriend and thought that I was only spending a few weeks to myself before two months went by. I spent this time pretty much isolated and one of my close friends that I had recently reconciled with at the time was upset thinking that I was avoiding him and the misunderstanding led to our falling out of communication again (even after I attempted to explain what had happened).
I'm not trying to excuse myself for being neglectful of my friends. I really thought that I wasn't spending that long in isolation. I was legitimately surprised what month it was and it was fast approaching my birthday. So that's my first personal flaw that makes me incredibly irresponsible: the inability for me to perceive the passage of time.
Part Two: Attention Deficit Disorder
I hate using this excuse. So many people are so much better at dealing with their attention deficit disorder than I am. Still, I am terrible at controlling my own ability to focus on things and this may be partially responsible for my problem in Part One. I space out ALL of the time. I space out while trying not to space out, I space out when I punish myself for spacing out, I space out and it interrupts an already established space out.
For those who don't know what it's like to have ADD, imagine a rambling old man. He starts by telling a story that is super focused on his time in the war. And during his time in the war he spent time in Europe. You know who else is from Europe is ABBA. Have you ever heard the song Gimme Gimme Gimme? Oh and that movie Mama Mia is ridiculous. But Pierce Brosnan was in it and he played a really good James Bond. Well, in Goldeneye at least. The rest were kind of crappy. Oh but as good as the Goldeneye movie was the N64 game that it spawned was revolutionary. It's practically responsible for first person shooter games being accepted on consoles! It was fun how it was kind of like an adventure game mixed with an arcade shooter. Oh man, my favorite arcade shooter is Carn Evil! Have you heard of it? It's super obscure but tons of fun! Unless you're afraid of clowns, because there are demon clowns all over that game. I never understood fear of clowns. Even when I was a little kid the movie, "It" didn't really scare me. Tim Curry is a damn good actor though.
That is what it's like to have ADD. You have to constantly catch yourself to keep on track. My train of thought derails more often than mine carts in action movies. This makes it difficult to keep in contact with friends because just about any time I think to contact them I may whip my phone out and have a fond memory of them at the same time. We were playing a game together, what game was it? Raptor: Call of the Shadows, right? I forget what the final boss was like in that game. Oh well my phone is in my hand, what was I going to use it for again? I forget, I'm just going to look up the final boss from Raptor on Youtube.
Believe me, I value my friends much more than the final boss of Raptor: Call of the Shadows. I am just completely unable to keep myself focused long enough to do anything.
Part Three: Social Awkwardness
This one will probably seem like bullshit to a lot of you (if the previous two didn't already) but I have no idea what to say to people I haven't spoken to in a long time. Most of my friends are delightful stoners and undergraduates so if I greet them with, "Hi, what have you been up to?" then I already know what my responses are going to be. It'll range from, "Nothing really, just chilling," to, "Just working, man. No time to do anything else."
It doesn't really fuel a conversation to say that you've spent the last eight months doing nothing that you can or want to talk about. Usually when I try to greet old friends it kind of ends on that note. Sometimes I just try to catch up by mentioning a bunch of random stuff that I've been working up and hoping that it will stimulate conversation. I stopped doing this because a few times it has caused some old acquaintances to think that I've become stuck-up and that I think that I'm better than everybody else because I want to talk about what I've been doing.
In any case, I'm terrible at conversing with somebody that I haven't conversed with in a while. So far my approaches have been asking people what they have been up to which goes to a dead end and talking about what I've been up to which makes me an asshole. The only thing left to do is try to organize some sort of hangout, but that's where the final problem comes into play.
Part Four: The Scene Is Dead
This is a cluster of problems condensed into one for the sake of brevity. The scene is simply dead. There are no good hangouts. Whoever used to host parties either became too busy with work to host any get togethers or became involved in drama with too many other friends for the hangout to be worth the risk.
The only places in town (or surrounding cities) that somebody can go to actually do something cost shitloads of money. Back when I had my old Walmart job I could probably afford taking myself to one hangout a paycheck given that I really budgeted when it came to food and gas. California is a damn expensive place to live and not many of my friends have jobs. Even less have jobs that pay more than minimum wage. And even then most of them spend the money on pot which IS a thing to do during a hangout but I no longer take part in the weed as of almost a year ago due to its negative mixture with my problem in Part Two up above.
Most of the time what I do now is hang out with friends while they smoke weed and just kind of sit half bored while they zone out and listen to music and I draw or something. Either that or I play games online with friends that don't even live within 1,000 miles of me. For the most part though I just sit with my girlfriend and watch television in my room while eating Mexican food and pastries and talking about video games which is honestly the most perfect existence I can imagine.
In conclusion:
So, to recap: I don't know how long it's been since I've talked to you. I get horrifically sidetracked when I actually do remember to talk to you. When I do talk to you I have no idea what to say. If you want to hang out with me I have no idea what we'd do. Write me whenever you want, I promise I'll try to make conversation but you will see firsthand how awful I am at it. I really do want to hang out with and keep in touch with you but I am just SO bad at it.
With love and a rambling mind,
William John Holly III
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