The Will to be Social

This weekend, Terry was gone to Green Bay with our church’s youth group as a chaperone for the District Youth Conference.  3,800 7th through 12th graders invading hotels and traveling in packs?  Yea, not my idea of a rockin’ good time!  What can I say, I’m not gonna lie!  But with that said, Terry loves it and I’m so proud of him for volunteering to work with and impact these kids.

As recently as a year ago, Terry leaving for the weekend meant that I made an exclusive date with my couch, my DVR, and probably a pizza.  I haven’t talked about this much on the blog yet, but I deal with some depression and anxiety, and with that I find it much easier to just be by myself and not make the effort to be social.  In some ways, this is okay ~ I’ve realized that I’m an introvert, which means that I truly do get recharged and rejuvenated by having some alone time.  However, too much alone time is definitely not healthy for me; too much time on the couch easily leads me into a downward spiral.

As soon as I found out that Terry would be gone for the weekend for Districts, I started planning in my head how I could best use the time to both relax and spend time working on building/maintaining those important girlfriend relationships in my life.  Side note ~ another “fun” aspect of my social anxiety is that I spend what seems to me to be an excessive amount of time thinking things through before I actually convince myself to put my thoughts into action!  I’ve also learned from past experiences that if I wait too long to make plans, I generally will end up getting too stressed at the last minute and resort to my couch-DVR-pizza routine.  So I sent out a few texts, and wound up with a wonderful, stress-free weekend filled with people!

I spent Friday night up near Algoma at my cousin Kristin’s, and then Saturday evening I spent with my friend Becky and her baby Mara.  Becky’s husband Paul was also at districts, which was perfect!  I also had Saturday afternoon to myself, so I got to recharge, although instead of getting some of the things done around the house that I wanted to I took a nap.  Kristin and I (and her husband, Lee) were up until almost three Friday night ~ that’s unheard of for this girl these days ~ so the nap was definitely worthwhile!  And then today, Terry’s uncle came to church with me, so I even had someone to keep me company there!

Reflecting on the weekend, I’m super proud of myself.  I’ve been working hard to be a more social person in the past two years or so.  I find it kind of silly sounding to say that I “work” at being social and maintaining friendships, but it’s really true; I know these things come naturally to some people, but I am definitely not one of those people!  This weekend was a great example to me of how far I’ve come, and I totally enjoyed myself which tells me that all the work is worth it!

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