I find it thought-inducing, sometimes, when I notice that casual friends (say, people at work) are, yet again, overlooking me for broad social gatherings.

The more cynical part of me wonders if it's partly because I don't turn to other people for validation.

It's probably more because I don't seek out the company of others as my default way to pass the time. And I detest small talk; I speak to someone if I have something to say to them, or they have something to say to me, not because I feel I should keep talking with them to maintain a friendship.*

(*Which ties into my comfort with not seeing friends for years because we're not living near each other and then meeting up and everything being as if we've not been out of touch for a long time. Those are the kinds of friendships I'm interested in. Rather than ones where I feel required to regularly see people when I'd rather be doing other things.**)

(**This idea some people have that social interaction should be everyone's default aggravates me. My ex, Tim, used to have a regular go at me for preferring to sit in my room and write, rather than sit in the living room and watch a movie and drink and talk about pointless shit. He didn't comprehend that while sometimes Option B is good fun and I enjoy it, a lot of the time I gain more from Option A. Also he didn't get the part where I didn't exist solely to fit his needs for me, which, heh, that would be why we're not dating anymore.)

I've never been good at insinuating my way into groups. I'm not one of those people who really needs the comfort of 400 facebook friends; I'll take the handful of very good friends I have, thanks. Going back to my first sentence in this post, I know very well that friendship is a two-way street; people aren't going to be desperate to be friends with me if I'm not showing some enthusiasm for friendship with them. I think I'm just one of those people who doesn't want to make friends with everyone, because most of the people in "everyone" aren't people I have much interest in talking to or hanging out with. I struggle to make conversation with some people at work because we have nothing in common. Yet other people seem to be friends with the majority of people in my part of the office. It must be something that's different about different people -- some default to a smaller number of good friends, others default to the good friends + a whole bunch of friends who are not overly close but they hang out with a lot, and despite the reasonably casual nature of their friendship they don't overlook each other for social stuff. That's the part I've never managed to achieve: casual friendship where I'm not overlooked.

This stuff doesn't make me depressed any more (though boy, I do wish someone had explained to me when I was younger that some people aren't good at social stuff and, you know, that's okay, and those people often have some really great friendships and who wants 400 facebook friends if you're not going to gain much from them? -- which is another thing: I don't gain much from casual friendships, though whether that's a cause or effect of the frequent overlooking, I don't know). Hence the phrase "thought-inducing" at the opening of this post. I find social interactions curious more than anything else.

And, fortunately, I do have some very good close friends, plus now I have people on LJ who actually share a bunch of interests with me (particularly the most important: writing), the lack of which has always been part of the problem for me with making friends (though provided the other person is an intelligent conversationalist, I tend to be pretty unfussed what their interests are), (oh, and fuck you, Tim, for thinking that "internet friends" and "real friends" are somehow mutually exclusive). So this isn't an I'm-depressed post. It's a this-shit-makes-me-thoughtful post.