techstep, neither of whom I had seen in a while.I feel hungry still for some sort of socialization that doesn't depend on going out and doing particular things. There was the Going and Getting Hot Dogs at Some Place event tonight that adam went to. Could have gone to that, but decided not to. Nights like these I'd like nothing more than slow, quiet conversation, smirks and closed eyes, plans and dreams... don't have anywhere to find it at the moment, but I'm not feeling too fretful about it. Chatting with
spillourguts makes me realize with every passing word how unskilled I am at being tactically dishonest, but, fuck it: at the same time I realized that I am a hell of a lot better at being honest than I was not too long ago. I can give account of my past without flinching, even the embarrassing bits. I can call someone attractive when I mean it without couching it in indirection and cautionary ambiguity. I can march up to the hazy, circumstantial boundary that divides unwanted attention from wanted, and take the rejection and suck it the fuck up if it turns out I misjudged.It's still so hard for me to not want to throw in the towel all the fucking time with interpersonal relationships, with a few admittedly important exceptions. I guess there still is the lurking pessimism that nobody would really be interested in me voluntarily, which is of exactly of the form as the sort of statements of "nobody would really find me attractive", "nobody would really want to hear me talk about what I love doing and thinking about" that make me so fucking sad to hear coming out of other people's mouths. It's so defeatist to just assert ahead of time, before even checking the evidence as it's coming in, that you're going to fail. I need to stop doing it.