Comfort Zone

've tried to be a little more relaxed about planning my weekends, but it's hard when you spend all week alone, only to turn around and spend the weekend alone as well. It's not happened that often but it sticks out in my mind when it does. One thing I've been struggling with is my group of "friends" and trying not to let my social life revolve around them. They often aren't proactive about reaching out to me, which often leaves me feeling out of the loop and questioning our alleged friendship. I have to text several of them in order to find out what's going on (if they respond) and often times, I have to hear from my female friend that they're all hanging out. Before I used to get my own invitations. Now, if she doesn't tell me, I don't know. But then everyone acts excited to see me and are all "Hey, long time. How's work?" etc etc. It doesn't help that the other two women who are affiliated with this group are dating people in the group and are invited by default. I, who keeps her panties on, am not sleeping with anyone and I've wondered on several occasions if that is why the invites are so infrequent and scattered.

Anyway, with this new resolve to not limit my social life to this one group (cause there might many lonely nights/ weekends if I do), I'm trying to be open to other outings/ gatherings. Last night, one of my friends that I carpool to work with, MK, invited me to hear his band at this bar. He's cool people and another of our co-workers was playing with him (also cool people) so I figured why not. Then ANOTHER coworker (the one who wears sweaters to the club) had some friends in town who wanted to go out and invited me to join them. On top of that, a friend from Nairobi was in town and she wanted to get together. It was turning into a busy night. So, again, going with my resolve to spread my social butterfly wings, I got dressed to go to dinner, a bar and potentially a club. Dinner was cool; we met at one of the cultural restaurants in town since I don't think my Nairobi friend had been to one before. I then jetted from there to the bar where I saw several people from work who had come out to support the band. It's always a little awkward for me, going to social functions where I know people from work will be there because I feel a little bit like Clark Kent. At work, I'm professional, with my work-appropriate skirts and spectacles. At night, the hemlines get a little shorter, the pants and shirts tighter, and I almost never wear my glasses. So there are always comments like "Wow, you look really nice" and of course, I'm feeling overdressed. The performance was...entertaining. MK had invited one of his friends, who is a somewhat popular Ethiopian singer, to sing with the band. He warned me that there might be some rock star theatrics and drama that came along with him. Sure enough, once this man came out, you would have thought he ran the band-- telling them to slow down, posting his foot on the speaker and leaning over like he was serenading someone, jumping all over the place, etc. The crowd was mostly expats so most of us didn't know who he was anyway--obviously, he didn't realize that (or was too drunk to notice). The band did a pretty good job of keeping up with him (especially since they hadn't practiced together before) but it was still pretty entertaining as he's trying to get the crowd hype and the crowd was almost adamant about NOT getting hype. Overall, though, it seemed like everyone had a good time and my coworkers were happy with their performance. I didn't end up going to the club but that's okay because I had on the wrong shoes anyway (I would have been sexy but definitely in pain). It was a somewhat early Friday night (especially given that there have been weekend nights where I didn't get home until five in the morning). But I had a good time. I've noticed that I will bend over backwards to hang out with one group of "friends" while shirking other groups of potential friends. Only to see that...the "friends" I thought were friends act like they don't know my number half of the time. It's been an eye-opening experience and I am becoming more comfortable spending time by myself (reading, decorating, watching tv, etc) and more open to the fun I can have with other (non-Black) people.

Tis all for now.