osprey_archer | Adventures in Line Dancing

My line-dancing class is over - did I mention I was taking a line-dancing class? I was taking an eight-week line-dancing class, which wrapped up today. I actually quite enjoyed it, after the third class or so; that was when my feet started to remember some of the dances, so I didn't have to think quite so hard about every single move.

There's a weekly beginners' class that meets at the same community center, on Wednesdays instead of Mondays; I'm thinking about continuing with that, because I enjoyed line dancing and it seems like a good idea to continue with something that I've already started rather than flitting hummingbird-like from one dance style to another without ever settling down anywhere.

Buuuuuut there's also an international folk dancing class, which has two six-week sessions starting in May. I'm not sure if they build on each other or not.

I could take both, I suppose. It is possible to have multiple activities in one week.

I entertain vague visions of eventually making a friend through this - everyone always tells me that joining things is the way to make friends; I have never found it to work out that way, but that's what they tell me. Or at least a buddy to hang out with in class. So far it hasn't worked out, but the dancing part has been fun, at least.

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Yay, dancing! (She says, belatedly logging into LJ.) It's so much fun.

I've never really made friends through joining things - acquaintances, occasionally - but I make friends so slowly offline that that may be an artifact of not sticking around in one place quite long enough. I think I was juuuust getting to the point of dance buddies at my old dance school after 2 years when I had to move. So at this point I think of activities as a chance to do activities and fulfill my need for occasional totally superficial human interaction.

But maybe there's a secret trick to it. :-/

I think there must be a trick to it, or maybe not a trick exactly, but some kind of friendship-making protocol that you and I have somehow missed? The advice to join activities in order to make friends is so ubiquitous, it has to work for some people. Presumably.

Actually, I have an RL friend from high school who did make a new best friend after joining a gym. So clearly it is a thing that happens.

I think it may partially just be...personalities? Probably not as simple as introvert/extravert, but I definitely know people who just make friends everywhere they go via couchsurfing/hitchhiking/going to parties, all of which are scenarios where I cannot imagine making friends at all. It is a mystery to me.

Online - shortcuts a lot for me, because I think I'm rather guarded IRL and there are big chunks of my life that feel too high-stakes or 'weird' to reveal to people I see all the time unless I already know them well, which makes it hard to get to know them well. I suspect this may actually be a common issue for people who are really into fandom, actually. I don't know if that's a piece for you at all.

Yes, there are definitely people who can make friends at the drop of a hat. I was thinking about joining a local hiking club, and then I thought about it a bit more and decided that making conversation with total strangers with nothing but the trees to provide a topic sounded appalling. But I know there are people who could do it.

The fandom thing is also an issue, definitely. I have been thinking about seeing a therapist and honestly a big part of my hesitation is the fact that I don't know how I would explain fandom's place in my life to someone who might have no understanding of it. "Well, I spent a year writing 200,000 words of Captain America fanfic rather than working on my pro writing career, so..." I feel like this might be hard for an outsider to understand.

I have actually come closer with hiking clubs than anything else, and might have managed if I'd been able to go more often and see the same people (so a local hiking club in the US is probably better odds than a somewhat incoherently run club that's half expats and half locals, the former of whom often appear for one or two hikes and then vanish) - people tend to talk about a lot of different things, and if you run out, you can admire the scenery or drink some water or talk to someone else. Plus you get to go hiking! (I'm not an enormous fan of group hiking and mostly do it because of transportation limitations, but it can be fun with a good leader.)

Yeah - I know some people talk about fandom with their therapists, but...I would find it very, very difficult also, and if you're talking around a big part of your life there's that question of how helpful the therapist can be. If only there were a way to find fannish therapists... :P Although given fandom's drama tendencies, idk if that would be a good idea!

If only therapists put "fandom-friendly" on their websites, right? Although then they'd probably have to make enormous lists of various odd hobbies that they're welcoming toward, and there'd always be a question of "did they just forget to list Hobby X or do they actually feel a deep-seated aversion to hardcore knitters," and it would probably be more trouble than it's worth.

I bet it's hard for something who's big into astrology, say, to find a therapist who will take that part of their life seriously.

Hah, well, I guess really the only thing to do is to bring up the "I have this nonmainstream hobby that is enormously important to me and here's why" elephant at first appointment and use that as part of the screening process. But easier said than done...

Well, that sounds paralyzingly terrifying. I guess fandom has become somewhat more mainstream in recent years, but there's being involved in fandom, and then there's writing tens of thousands of words of fanfic involvement in fandom.

Yeah, I...don't know, either. I guess it depends on whether you feel like you want to/need to discuss fandom with your therapist or whether you can be nonspecific about the context in which you're writing tens of thousands of words.

But the thing about mentioning it at the first meeting is that you haven't yet invested anything into the therapeutic relationship, either. So if the therapist seems judgemental or weird about it, thanks but no thanks, you look for another one. (Therapist shopping as an activity does suck, but IME it sucks regardless, since you can't always predict bad fits.)

Adventures in Line Dancing

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