Since moving over to QA, I’ve gone from having a bunch of coworkers to having a single partner: Simon Reed. Simon helped train me when I first got hired on and we’ve been on pretty good terms since. He reminds me a lot of my friends in high school, but I like him anyway. Especially since he’s been keeping an eye out for me as I hunt for a new job. He’s already hooked me up with an interview and gave me a lead to another position.
But since working together in QA, he’s been even nicer to me. A lot nicer. A little too nice, in fact. Knowing that I’m an anime fan, he’s offered me access to his collection. He’s also offered to loan me CDs and MP3s and DVDs. He’s bought me slushies and gives me free donuts (he charges everyone else 50 cents. Notoriously quiet, he’s opened up and talked about what’s going on in his life. He’s acted less the coworker or partner and more the friend.
But I have declined his offers, paid for the donuts, not been as open with him, and avoided friendship at all costs. I hate doing it, but I don’t want to be his friend. In fact, I actively want to not be his friend. And I feel terrible for it because it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with Paige, his fiance. Paige used to work at FalStaff and she quickly counted me among her closest friends without really asking my permission. It’s not that Paige is a bad person, but for a variety of reasons she speaks straight to the chill in my bones. I can’t go on about her without getting completely sidetracked. One of the best days at work I ever had was when she gave her two weeks notice.
Of course I can’t tell Simon that. Nor can I really see him without seeing her. She’d insist upon it. So I’m nice and I’m polite, but I keep a wall up that I wouldn’t otherwise. It pains me to do it because he is, in many ways, exactly the sort of friend I need up here but do not have.
I’m not a particularly outgoing person. Neither is Clancy. We’re both kinda loners. When you keep to yourself for long enough, it starts to become every bit the habit that smoking is. Or looking down when you walk. After a while, you forget how to actually make friends. With the exception of Rick and Pen Harley, every friend I’ve made since college has been through someone that I’ve dated (I always had more motivation for that kind of socialization). When I was taking calls for a satellite company I made a friend during training. Got his number but never called. Met another guy at a coffee shop, followed up on that one a couple of times, but eventually decided that it would be best to let that one slide. On Clancy’s end, there’ve been a couple of coworkers that we’ve gotten along with, but one has already left the area and the other has two (or three?) kids to contend with.
A lot of this is circumstancial. We’re not a member of the in-group here. We’re approaching thirty and don’t have kids. She works insane hours. These are things that we cannot help. But even so, we live next to what may be the only non-LDS majority place outside of certain neighborhoods in the state’s capital. A university town, to boot. But she’s been so focused on her career and I’d gotten soft by living around my friends from high school and college.
And, as cliche and high school as it sounds, we lack a “group.” Our politics are out of sync with our temperaments. Our interests are out of sync with our values. Basically, the people who think like us intellectually do not behave like us recreationally. I’m a professional IT person that has come to hate computers. I’m an artist-sort that has donated his talents to corporate America, alienating myself from both groups. I’m not LDS, but I’m also not someone that seems to have dedicated their identity in opposition to The Church. I thought this stuff would stop mattering after high school, but while it does matter less it hasn’t stopped mattering. At some point, my interests became a mile wide and an inch deep. There’s no ready group or club that I can go to, and I’m not good at mustering up the energy to seek people out. I’m trying to figure out at what point I stopped liking people.
Some days Clancy and I are of the mind that we just bide our time here (we’re leaving in July of next year for parts unknown) and try again somewhere else where the deck is not quite stacked so highly against us. But we both have a pretty high locus of control and we hate the prospect of giving up like that.
And throughout all of this, I’m avoiding the one person at work that has gone out of his way to be my friend.
I got nuthin other than, that was a great post. And good luck.
Comment by Kate the Peon — August 24, 2005 @ 12:33 pm
I have to say that I really like your style of writing. It’s very easy to read, to the point, yet always has a message.
Though it’s not to the same extreme, I can somewhat relate to your feeling that you’re isolated from those around you in your current city. Most of my friends here are those I’ve known since high school, yet, I wonder if we’d be friends as easily if we met now, for I feel like I have less in common. I have a hard time meeting new people here because of education, cultural interest, etc., so that’s another reason why I’m moving in a couple of months.
Comment by Becky — August 24, 2005 @ 4:38 pm
I don’t think you guys need to look upon your leaving as “giving up”. Some people are just not compatible with their surroundings - it has nothing to do with your failings, or lack of fortitude or anything like that. If you don’t like where you’re living, or the job you have to do, or the people you’re forced to associate with (or even the ones you’re not forced to associate with) then look for greener pastures elsewhere.
It really, really has nothing to do with giving up. After all, if you fall into a lake, don’t worry if you can’t control your situation enough to force yourself to suddenly grow gills. Swim to shore and find another boat…
Comment by Barry — August 25, 2005 @ 1:30 pm
Kate, thanks!
Becky, I had some really good friends in high school in that I still get along really well with them. The education/culture factor scares the living crap out of us. She’s studying rural medicine, which means that we’re ultimately going to end up in smalltown USA with a lower overall level of education. The cultural distance won’t be as large as what we have now, and every town is different, but it’s a concern.
Barry, by “giving up” I was mostly referring to giving up on a social life while we’re here and just waiting till we land in another town. But your interpretation isn’t too far off base. We lament, sometimes, that we need to leave this beautiful part of the company for social reasons. I discussed this with a high school friend that landed on the outskirts of the Mormon west and both of us think that on one hand we should fight the religious control and discrimination in the area. But then again, we’d rather live our lives and not spend all our energy fighting the system, so to speak. And there’s the matter that they set the institutions… who are we to come in and try to tear it down? I should post on this at some point…
Comment by trumwill — August 25, 2005 @ 1:46 pm
There are some people whose level of success in life is defined by the level of excellence they’ve reached in a career, or any kind of job really. I guess it’s ultimately a Puritanic attitude that hard works are what define a person.
Myself, I see work as a necessary, and yes a noble thing - and one may do something that one enjoys immensely, and serves a greater good, like being a minister, or a counselor, or police or fireman…those kinds of things. But for me all those are secondary to the life I devote to my family, and friends. The “social life” is where I find the greatest satisfaction and success, and I can’t imagine living where I achieved great notoriety because of my work but had little to come home to. What I come home to defines me, and that’s what’s most important to me.
Comment by Barry — August 25, 2005 @ 2:41 pm
[…] Identity
Filed under: Office — trumwill @ 1:37 pm
In the comments to my whiney-lonely post, Barry made the following observation: There are some people whose level of success i […]
Pingback by Hit Coffee » Career and the Male Identity — August 26, 2005 @ 1:37 pm
Good post! Very well-written in an introspective manner.
My wife and I live in a rural area which, while not LDS, is dominated by fundamentalist Christians. We’ve made a few local friends, but if we want to mingle with like-minded people we have to make an hour’s drive. We play Irish music in a couple of sessions in two different towns, and the sort of people who play this music tend to be our sort. The music gives us an excuse to get out regularly, something we never used to do, and we’ve made many new friends.
We may eventually sell the place and move somewher with more like-minded people, but for now, what we are doing works. I wish gas wasn’t so high!
Comment by Larry Ayers — August 30, 2005 @ 5:20 pm
The rural areas in general seem more population by the religious. It’s of concern to Clancy and I even if we’re out of Mormonland. One of the reasons that your blog caught my attention was because your situation could be very similar to what ours will become, if that makes sense. Time will tell, I suppose.
Comment by trumwill — August 31, 2005 @ 10:46 pm
{Hit Coffee: Musical Cubicles}
The Girl’s Club was interrupted when Marc made the quick transition to QA. Along with Simon and the girls, we get along extremely well. Marc and I have similar interest and temperaments as well as a sense of humor. He also doesn’t have a significant other that I detest.
Comment by trumwill — September 7, 2005 @ 11:11 am
[…] fore and decline to mention how much I loathed that. In any case, as much as I absolutely hated the fact that her relationship with Simon forced me to distance myself from him somewhat (because s […]
Pingback by Hit Coffee » Inappropriate Pseudoflirtation — December 23, 2008 @ 2:47 pm