Friday, March 11, 2011

Haven't posted in a while...

...and I know I don't have sufficient readership for it to matter all that much, haha.

But I've been busy.

Been writing a lot. I'm on the home stretch on finishing my first novel. It's hard to wrap up, I'm finding, in part because I love this story and it was literally designed to go on forever. So it's hard to choose an acceptable closing point. As the book is over 130,000 words long — which comes to roughly 450 pages, quite long for a first novel — I've had to do a lot of figuring to get things wrapped up. But even so I'm nearly there, and I'm confident I'll find a publisher quite rapidly.

I had a birthday last week, and one of my friends pulled together an amazing birthday party. I don't get these things very often — it just seems ostentatious to ask people to come to one's own birthday — and I was shocked, awed and above all, humbled by how many people showed up, or said they wished they could only it was too short notice.

I continue to be a total social maladroit, although I think I'm getting better at spotting the cues I miss. There's one in particular I hope I don't miss again: Twice now, a girl has seen me going to the coffee shop near work, and lingered outside until I came out. Both times, it didn't even occur to me that they lingered in hopes of engaging me in conversation.

All of these things, of course, do tie into one another. I've never been comfortable calling myself a geek or a nerd (even now, when it's pretty much entirely acceptable to so identify), because the only thing I geek out over is my own creation, the stories and universes I make. I simply can't work up the same level of enthusiasm for the worlds others create.

I know it sounds bad when I say it that way, but on the other hand, it's what makes me a writer and an artist instead of just a consumer of art.

Anyway, point is: I've spent so much time in my own universes that I never did quite learn the rules of the one I actually live in, and especially socially. And I have to admit, I honestly didn't realize how many people I've somehow endeared myself to. By the same token, I miss the hints girls drop, I misunderstand the lingering gazes (do I have something on my face?) and explain away the smiles and flirts.

Sure, some of this is a self-esteem thing — hard to be pudgy in a world populated by skeletal beauties without occasionally berating the spare tire — but that's also too easy an answer, and it hides the larger problem. Which is that somehow I missed the nuances of interpersonal interaction that facilitate relationships. Probably because I was off playing superheroes when they had that class.

So unaware, my attempts couldn't be suave enough, missing as they did the expected mark. Some called me creepy for that, and other things as hurtful. The misunderstandings and scorn acted upon the self-loathing and angst in an endless recursive roil of festering emotion.

And then I grew out of it.

I still don't know all the rules, and I still miss the cues. But I waste no time on self-abasement (haven't for some years), and people know me as a happy fellow, if snarky. And I decided, on my birthday, to get out more. To engage more often, to take a remedial class in human interaction, as it were. And not stop working at it because I've failed before and will fail again.

Not just because I want what so many do — a loving spouse, offspring, tax breaks — but because it's well past time I let myself geek out over the real world, too.