Conversations with friends

I am a verbal processor.

I think out loud, preferably talking through things with someone. Sometimes I talk out loud to myself, because even hearing things in my own voice often helps me to figure out what hits the right note. As I talk, things start to make more sense.

In some ways, this might not be expected, especially since writing is such an outlet for me. Maybe it has something to do with my ENFP-ness? I’m not quite sure. But writing is generally for contemplating and rehashing emotions, picking them apart and analyzing them, while sometimes talking about things can lead to spontaneous understandings and developments.

Honestly, one of the biggest challenges of the last year and a half has been being surrounded by introverts, by people who carefully prepare for class, do all of the reading, even take notes, and then don’t feel compelled to say a single thing in class. Their silence gets me riled up and all of a sudden I am talking all of the time. I’m saying purposefully silly things just to see if I can elicit a response. Bring a little life to the room. Learn something new from the people with whom I spend almost all of my time. Occasionally, it works. But often, it doesn’t or it doesn’t really feel like me.

I oscillate between feeling kind of embarrassed by how much I talk and feeling defensive. This is who I am. If we’re going to sit in this room for three hours and no one has anything interesting to add, no further insights about these often thought provoking readings, no guilt and discomfort at the silence, sure, I’ll be the one to pipe up.

I’m a talker, yes, but I have never been the most out there person in the room or the center of attention. I like being once removed from that, heard and seen but out of the spotlight enough to be able to share my own (sometimes snarky) responses with a chosen few. That’s just not the way it goes here.

This weekend, I had a couple of great conversations with friends. The stage has been set in a lot of ways for introspection—including starting my last semester of school, thinking about the job search, putting myself out there more professionally and personally—and I’m sort of taking the time and allowing myself to look ahead, to think about what I want this year and years to come to bring my way.

I’m not tied to a specific place. I am not in a field with well-defined job titles. I’ve traveled very little in America (I only just increased my count of states visited above countries visited by taking a ten minute, otherwise pointless trip into Arkansas two weeks ago…) There are a lot of unknown variables.

Over Christmas break, people asked me how I like Texas, almost always saying Texas with an exaggerated drawl. My stock answer had something to do with Austin not being quite like that drawled out version of Texas, but warm and sometimes weirdly Texan and other times, really not. A place I mostly like, enjoying school, good food, lots more to explore, etc. Talking to a friend of my mom’s who I don’t know that well but who is clearly an adept listener, her response to all of this was “Hmm…it sounds like something’s missing.” I was kind of taken aback but thought she might be right.

Last week, I saw a woman with a Spanish flag painted on her Toms and struck up a conversation. She’s from Madrid but has been in Austin for six years. She likes it here. It’s a lot like Spain. And as we talked about that, her experiences here and mine there, I realized she was right in a lot of ways. I was reminded of those airport doors sliding open on my first visit here, that intense rush of emotion and nostalgia and excitement when I realized that this city smells like Córdoba. I’m guessing it was probably the bougainvillea, though I’m not quite sure. It made me feel happy and at home in a way I hadn’t felt at all in other cities I had visited.

And so on Friday, I was out with some friends, one of whom had friends here visiting from California. It was already a weird day because it was my first snow day ever, caused by what could barely be described as a skiff of snow. We started talking about online dating, as her friends had met on OKCupid. We laughed about the two kinds of male profiles—what I’ll charitably call Über Geek and Testosterone Cross Fit Paleo Guy—and about how hard and demoralizing it can be to wade through all of the weirdos creepers losers noise. I said that I thought it didn’t help that women messaging men appears to be some strange taboo.

Later that night, we were at a bar that I love in theory but sometimes loathe in practice. Good atmosphere, great music, could be a lot of fun but it only sometimes is. And I think part of that, for me, is that women don’t ask men to dance here and not too many men ask me. Maybe it’s my resting bitch face, or the fact that I’m taller than about a third of them. Hard to say. But I was feeling vaguely annoyed at another night of standing around and not feeling any agency here. My friend’s California friend asked whether the men here seemed Southern, whether women ever ask men to dance. We joked a bit about Southern chivalry, said that, no, it wasn’t common practice, and I heard the words “That’s why I’m moving” tumble out of my mouth. Hearing them, I couldn’t help but be surprised. Was that true? Almost immediately, I knew it was. I knew it wasn’t that simple, blah blah, but at the base of everything was this understanding that these are not my people. This is not my place.

Almost right away, I said my goodbyes. I got in my car and listened to Ani DiFranco for the first time in a long time, singing along, loudly, knowing the weird pauses in the live Living in Clip versions of songs even though I hadn’t listened to that album in years. Thinking about some of the people who know me well, some of them people I haven’t talked to in a long time. Missing that easy companionship, what I thought was a question of time but I realize now is also a question of compatibility.

I went on vacation to Phoenix in December and loved the museum there. I tried to go in with an open mind, wondering if I could live and work there, but as much as I loved the museum, the city just wasn’t for me. Too many bedazzled jeans and sun seekers and signs about guns everywhere (outside coffee shops, bars, grocery stores). Too many cops and ugly strip malls and smokers filling every patio so you can’t even enjoy the fact that it’s sunny and 70 degrees outside. I keep trying to convince myself that maybe I could find a weird little niche in Atlanta or Houston or that maybe a so-so city with a good job wouldn’t be so bad.

All of a sudden on Friday night, I didn’t think that way. I realized that, to some extent, I’m recruiting a city and my living space and my people as much as I’m recruiting job prospects. I’m not so sure exactly what shape that will take, and I’m still trying to be open minded to all that I don’t know and haven’t seen and haven’t tried, knowing that moving is always an option and that each place teaches me all kinds of things I maybe couldn’t have learned someplace else. That sometimes even places you like, places where you are frequently shocked by how happy and lucky you feel, aren’t really your places. Maybe, with the right people, that’s OK.

For me, it’s almost certainly going to be a clean slate. And yes, I am developing a bit of a complex about turning 30. I have found a number of gray hairs and have plucked them, not quite ready to deal with losing my most defining feature. Despite having basically lost my ability to hold my liquor, I find that I’m sometimes really tempted to go out and let loose and shake my ass on some sweaty dance floor somewhere. I’m engaging in a fair amount of internal debate, mostly when stuck in traffic and feeling invisible in this mass of humanity, about pushing what I expose here, trying to be more personal and more open. You know, 32 flavors and then some.

I’m not sure where this is all headed. I have Atmosphere bouncing around in my head: “You see me move back and forth between both/I’m trying to find a balance/I’m trying to build a balance.” Maybe, as I navigate decisions and spaces and what feels right to me, coming home to this space I’ve cultivated over the years will feel right. I’m honestly not sure yet. But here I am today, internet, one member of this mass of humanity, trying to find her little corner of this world.