How unusual that I would make chat contact with three strangers today and two of them may continue chats moving forward. Making online friends isn’t easy and then three appear in one day.
My mind starts to obsess. It is so easy for first contact to fizzle out. I’m just off and I believe that works in person better where interaction can be corrected. When I see faces and body language I adapt. It’s easy to miss those cues in text. I try to match intellect but my humour is frequently misunderstood and people will often not comment, and just stop contact.
Chatting with strangers in foreign cities is something both parties have to want, and enough to accept timing issues. I can chat any time but I don’t want to a lot. If the chat is effort, I don’t respond, but all to often, I don’t because friends are hard.
I can say I want friends over and over, but when they appear and I realize how much work It is to maintain that friendship that may or may not have enough in common to survive, I tend to not try. Much like every other aspect of my life.
I had a lot of fun talking to these three people in text messages today. I’d like to continue but at some point it will fizzle away like all the others. We both have to try and I get self-conscious that I’m just too odd. In person I use that to my advantage but it’s a lot trickier online. There’s so many ways it can go wrong with the wrong word and wrong speed moving forward.
I start analyzing the benefits of an online friend. They won’t be perfect, and more often than not , one of us gets needy.
I should just shut up and take the win. A friend for a day is a gift.
