Got a few things done over the weekend.  I renewed my lease on my apartment.  I did this because my lease was going to expire in May and if I do move it won’t be until late summer at the earliest.  Also got new license plates for my car.  My state changes the designs every few years.  And for the first time in years Nebraska has plates that aren’t sensory overload 🙂  Simple is good sometimes.

I’m still feeling quite stable mentally.  I think I finally cured my problems of sleeping too much.  I usually sleep only six hours a night now and nap for an hour in the afternoons.  Haven’t felt any real depression or anxiety for a few weeks now.  I go sometimes get lonely as I don’t have much for intelligent conversation in my apartment complex.  Outside of my landlady, I don’t get much for interesting conversation.  Most people in my complex seem to be content to complain about how they don’t get enough in social security or about the antics of fellow tenants.  Well, it’s not my fault some of these people spend so much money on cigarettes and lottery tickets.  And it’s also not my fault that some people allow themselves to worry themselves sick over things that don’t matter.  It just gets old after awhile having the same conversations about the weather or who did what to whom.

I admit to isolating more than is healthy.  At least more than is healthy for most people.  But I never really have enjoyed socializing.  Let me take that back, I enjoy socializing with certain types of people.  I enjoy socializing with intellectuals, avid readers, and people with a wide range of interests.  I just don’t get that very often.  I have never gotten that very often, especially when growing up.  I did get to socialize a great deal with interesting, intelligent, and well read people when I was in college.  College was the happiest five years of my life.  Unfortunately it was also a temporary environment.  I have never met the range of people and intelligences I met in college since.  It’s not even close.

The older I get the less chances I have to socialize.  Many of my well read college friends now have careers and families, so I don’t get to see them very often.  Even my friends without children I don’t get to talk to as often as I would like.  Right now the big thing saving my sanity and keeping my social life alive is participating in group forums on Facebook.  Sure I’ll never get to meet those people as we are spread all over the world, but I still get to have some kind of socializing with people I can relate to.

I don’t enjoy going to bars on Saturday nights.  I don’t enjoy talking about sports or politics for hours on end.  I never cared for people who complained about their jobs or spouses.  I guess I am ultimately not someone you would want as a dinner guest.  I just have little use for small talk about mundane nonsense.  I imagine that makes me look like a show off to most normal people.  But I’m really not showing off that much of what I know and can remember.  I actually have to dumb down around most people.  And I can’t stand it.  That’s why I love the internet so much.  I can much, much easier meet with people with similar interests than I could ever have imagined twenty years ago.  The internet is a social God send for me.  I don’t think I’d be as stable without the interactions I get from others through it.