November 13, 2013

  • new girl

    “I used to feel so alone in the city.  All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside.  Because how do you meet a new person?  I was very stunned by this for many years.  And then I realized, you just say, 'Hi.'  They may ignore you.  Or you may marry them.  And that possibility is worth that one word.” - Augusten Burroughs

    The San Diego mantra. I've mentioned it on my Tumblr and my Facebook, but it's relevant enough that I thought it was time to etch it here, too.

    -+-

    conversation with an undergrad on 11/7:

    -- "Good news! So I've now been working here for exactly one month. I guess I'm not going to get fired!"
    "I don't think that was ever the plan, Christa."
    -- "I'M STILL STOKED, YAY"

    -+-

    There's a fine balance between being alone and being lonely.

    For me, that balance is now incredibly salient. As a working girl in the big city of San Diego, most of my loved ones are now hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. It's something that I've read about in Young Adult novels. It's something that I've watched about in romantic comedies. Of course, moving somewhere and starting a new life -- this is an enormously common occurrence. At some point, it happens to most people, if not everyone. It's just now my turn to take a stroll down the catwalk.

    Now that I'm in the big grown-up world of careers and manifestations of life goals, I've found that relocating for a job puts a lot more stress on that social balance than when relocating between schools or when moving out to college. When it comes to education, like when I moved to Sacramento for high school or moved to Merced for undergrad, school all but guarantees that you'll be thrown into a pond full of other fish to meet and swim with. You are constantly surrounded by classmates going through identical learning experiences and share similar goals. Even when I was extraordinarily depressed and antisocial my first two years of college, I still met my would-be housemate in my General Chemistry laboratory class. I still met many people in a variety of classes and undergraduate clubs and societies. In fact, with group activities in most of my courses, sometimes it would even be hard not to meet people. It was my own personal shyness and my own preference of "uh do i feel like making friends or would i rather stare at the floor quietly" that dictated my interactions more than whether there was adequate opportunity. By the time that I reached that fledgling stage in my life where I made a complete 180 from "Anonymous Shy Girl That Only Wanted to Online Chat With Her Long Distance Boyfriend and Nothing Else" to "MAKE ALL THE FRIENDS," the tightly interwoven web of a small college community made it incredibly accessible to transform from a nameless introvert to a social butterfly.  Even after I came back down from that crazy extroverted girl to a more balanced, less forceful self that's more comfortable with her skin and her social attitude, my grounding and my lessons remained valid, and I developed some fantastic, genuine friendships.  Though it's been more than half a year since graduation and we're all relatively far from each other, we still try to regularly update one another, and we continue to plan our future reunions.

    Now, conducting research as a lab manager in the huge city of San Diego, at an enormous campus compared to humble UCM, I feel like the social rule book has been thrown out. Even though I'm not a student, I still feel myself becoming one tiny fish in a giant ocean of people. It's hard to have a proper conversation when everything moves in waves and blurs. Where people come and go, faster than the blink of an eye. Moreover, although I walk down the streets surrounded by others, work itself feels like a social fishbowl. I mean, I'm developing a decent rapport with my co-workers, which is good. However, I'm primarily BFFs with my lab computer and my lab bench, who I hang out with Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm.

    It's been two months since Jacob -- the last SURF intern standing -- left San Diego. In both of my summer experiences in San Diego, I was on a social island. After all, put 16 people from all over the country together in the same apartment complex, and of course it would be natural for us SURF interns to cling together, to explore San Diego as a unit. However, as summer came to an end, they all had to leave, while I stayed behind. The members of my undergraduate research dream team are now in Maryland, New Hampshire, Georgia.  Effectively, since then, my life in San Diego -- professionally and socially -- hit a giant Reset button. I've been living here for a total of nine months, and the sights and streets are increasingly familiar; I can tell you all about the cultures and reputations of the many distinct neighborhoods of San Diego, and I can take you to a bunch of great places to eat. Other than that, I feel like I've just arrived. As I wrote to a pen-pal online, "My work situation feels like I'm both very new and mildly old to San Diego at the same time."

    Currently, I am now at that point where I am straddling the line between alone and lonely.

    Many people at UC Merced knew me as some outgoing off-the-wall social beast, while others know me as a quaint, respectful listener. Empirically, the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator describes me as 51% extroverted and 49% introverted in the "attitude" domain. I was like, "ooo yeah that's cool bro," but over the past few months in San Diego, I've really started to get it. There are days where I'll gladly chat up any friendly person on the bus on my way to work, or I'll ask to sit next to someone at the food court and have small conversation throughout my hour-long lunch break. I'll be the one to ask, "Let's keep in touch!" to people that I sit next to in scientific seminars, and I'll be the one to provide my e-mail address or phone number before walking away. Then, there are other days where all I really crave is to be alone in my room and read a good book, or to go down Clairemont Mesa Blvd and enjoy a quiet, relaxing cup of hot boba tea. There are days where I only want the company of the sun as it sets behind the Pacific Ocean, and to enjoy the beauty of having a beach-side cliff all to myself.  I've been making acquaintances here and there, and I have two old friends in town (one from undergrad, and one from SURF) that I meet with at least once every few weeks.  And really, for the most part, that's been more than enough for me.

    But it's hard to deny that I miss it. I miss it in increasing amounts. I miss coming home from school at the end of the day, and walking through the front door to the welcome sight of my housemates all having dinner together. I miss the choir of, "Hiiii, Christa!!!" ringing from the kitchen. I miss my best friends asking me all about the details of my day, and sharing with me the details of theirs, as I cook beef and broccoli on the stove. I miss how dinner could easily last three or four hours if we didn't take care in restraining our conversations, because we would just get so lost in talking about simply everything. I miss going over to the apartment in Merced that was essentially my second home, and every time I came over, its two residents would always scheme for a new prank to play on me as I rang their doorbell. I miss how we would just lounge around the living room, which was completely devoid of furniture except for a TV and a PlayStation 3, and I would do my homework while watching them take turns playing Skyrim.

    Perhaps it's impatience more than anything else.  After all, from one perspective, it's been two long months since The Last Intern left.  In another light, it's been only two months since he left. I should be more patient, because honestly, it can take a long time to develop a foundation in a new city. But part of me feels like this off-kilter feeling to life may have started a long time ago, when I turned off that kitchen light in my Merced house for the last time, because that was the day that I moved away from Home. While San Diego, in so many respects, is the perfect city... it sure doesn't feel like home yet.

    Some actual progress info: A lot of people have been giving me advice on how to spread my branches in this big city, and I've been taking them to heart. I'm definitely not a total wallflower (51% extroverted, ya boii), so I've been good on my word on testing out advice (one peculiar piece of advice even involves finding platonic friends on a dating site? what?), but it's definitely taking some trial & error in making them stick, especially in a town like San Diego.  Like, "Let's meet up for [lunch/dinner/dessert/boba/coffee]! Text me when you're free?" is always a gamble when I put the reins in the other person's hands, although I feel like the give-and-take balance is necessary after enough times that I coordinate meet-ups myself. Most of my memorable meet-ups in San Diego have been with old friends and co-workers, but nothing yet has really attached me to the SoCal natives except for 1-2 dinners with people that I meet on-campus or that I've met at Scripps.  So I'm not utterly hopeless, but I would not complain if the winds were to change.  Oh well, there's time yet!

    I may not feel lonely quite yet (and hopefully I'm not going to continue going down that path for excruciatingly long), but man, I would sure like to start turning this great city into home!