I'm completely oblivious. Or am I?

Okay, this whole post was triggered by a link I saw on Facebook, oddly enough.  So you'll have to read this other thing before my thing will make a whole lot of sense.  Here it is (the picture is enormous, this is only a sized-down version, so you're probably going to have to go to the link below to actually read it.)

http://www.tickld.com/x/12embarrassinstories

Okay, now that those few who read this have also read that, on with what I'm going to say: I'm puzzled by this.

I've pretty much always felt like I was completely blind when it came to "figuring out if a girl likes me" situations, or picking up on "hints" that someone might be trying to give me.  And yet... most of these examples (which I'm guessing are intended to show how oblivious a "normal" guy can be in this kind of situation) seemed incredibly obvious to me.  Oh, and a friend who also posted this on Facebook said that he got through several of them without suspecting anything before he figured out what was going on in these situations.  So my initial thought of "well, it's probably just as obvious to everyone else because these are probably exaggerated for comedic purposes" probably wasn't entirely the case.  These aren't obvious to everyone; at least some real guys who are not named Eddie don't find all of these as obvious as I did.

Now the specifics--and yeah, that means you're about to get my run-down of every last one of these and a description of how obvious (or not) I would find it if I was the guy in the situation...

1. First of all, a girl has freaking asked me on a date so I would be assuming she likes me in some way from the very beginning.  Attn: girls--please actually do that at some point, if you'd be interested in going on a date with me in the first place.  Having a girl ask me on a date would make things SO much easier on my end of things, since asking is hard.  Anyway... assuming "she leans in on the couch" means she's leaning on me, yeah, again, this would be incredibly obvious.  Also, I've seen Jerry Springer before so that part wouldn't happen anyway.  I'd be far more interested in the fact that she is apparently changing into her pajamas right there in the same room with me. XD
   
2. Probably one of the most obvious on here.  First of all, she's freaking kissed me already, so (again) I'm going to assume she likes me in some way already by that point.  Second, if someone says something like that shortly after kissing me, the only possible way I could interpret it is that she wanted to do more than just kiss me and was sort of indirectly suggesting it.
   
3. Not immediately obvious, but after several repeats of the girl insisting on staying behind with me I'd probably wonder if something was up.
   
4. Again... probably one of the most obvious.  I don't think much more needs to be said.
   
5. This is probably the only one on the list that wouldn't even make me suspect anything.  I wouldn't be getting a Diet Coke (or a diet anything, for that matter), though.
   
6. Incredibly obvious.  Also mildly terrifying, especially if this coworker was not someone I already knew very well.  Not so much an "I wouldn't notice" situation as an "I might be scared off by this" situation.
   
7. Not too obvious, but I would at least suspect something if a girl specifically asked if I wanted to sit right next to her rather than just asking me to sit down in a more general/vague way.
   
8. If they were strangers, I would probably be slightly freaked out by this situation.  I may or may not end up sitting and talking to them a bit anyway.  If they were people I knew, it would be at least sort of obvious.
   
9. A bit like #7, but more obvious.  Someone who specifically approaches me and asks me to come over and talk to them alone? Yeah, that would probably raise some suspicions.  But grabbing my hand while shooing some sketchy guy away? Yeah, that makes it obvious.
   
10. I might not suspect that she liked me right away, but if this was someone I got along well enough with that we could talk and play pool together for a couple hours, I definitely would want to keep talking to her afterward.  I don't think I'd ever actually choose to just walk off home by myself if I had any other option that didn't involve me being alone...
    
11. Again... incredibly obvious.  Especially if she is already sleeping in the same bed with me at the time.  How could someone not suspect something here??
    
12. Not the most obvious.  I'd be more likely to be like "uh, I dunno, I've never really had coffee, I don't think I'd like it much, I guess I could try some though" rather than "not at 2:00 AM."  Unless I had to get up annoyingly early the next morning, anyway.

 So... yeah.  Out of a list of 12, only one would be something I'd be completely oblivious to.  Only a few more would probably not register as a "she likes me" hint, even though I would end up spending extra time with her in those situations anyway so she'd probably have a chance to make it more obvious later on.  The rest are all so obvious that even I would at least suspect that something was up.

I am so confused now.  Am I actually LESS oblivious to this kind of thing than I thought?  I am somehow less oblivious than the average guy, even? I thought for sure it was the other way around.  Do these only seem obvious because I'm reading about another person's situation, not actually being in them myself, or would they be just as obvious if they actually happened? I suppose maybe they would be now, if a similar situation happened in real life, since I'd be able to remember "oh hey, this is like that one thing from that list and it seemed really obvious to me there" and notice that.

Now I'm starting to wonder if maybe the next time I get suspicions that some girl may like me, I should put those thoughts in the "this is probably true on some level, until proven otherwise" pile instead of ignoring them or writing them off as just me reading too much into things.  I mean, I know for a fact that I do sometimes read too much into things (one girl that I suspected of liking me at one point in the past was later proven to have not ever liked me in that way, or even considered me as a possibility thanks to the age gap), but maybe now I'll be able to tell myself "okay, maybe it isn't that every time" and that might help me sort of... pick up on things that are actually intended as hints better in the future.

Wonder when I'll be actually able to test my newly-discovered maybe-not-completely-blind-after-all guessing abilities.  I do sort of have suspicions that one person might be starting to like me... there've been a few moments that definitely set off the "whoa, people don't normally say things like this to me, where is this coming from" alarm.  Seriously, some things that were said could've come straight out of the "how to give a compliment that Eddie will actually appreciate in a meaningful way rather than being confused or disbelieving of it" handbook, if such a thing existed.  Of course, compliments are still weird for me so my reaction probably came across as confused and/or disbelieving anyway, but on the inside it was more like "holy crap, that's just about the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."  So... I'm kind of starting to wonder there.  There's also still the lingering "who's the unidentified girl at SVU who apparently liked me a year ago?" question, assuming whoever this was hasn't already graduated/left on a mission/left for some other reason or just lost interest by now (it has been over a year now, after all.)  I have pretty definitively crossed one of my original guesses off the list at this point (I suspect someone who liked me wouldn't randomly un-friend me on Facebook for no apparent reason!), and another of my original guesses is no longer around, so I'm down to only one of my original guesses.  And... one other person who for some reason I didn't consider as a possibility at first, even though I know she was there at that dance where I was informed that someone else who was there apparently liked me, and she also fits into the other vague descriptions I was able to get out of the person who informed me of this.  I'm actually kind of leaning toward this previously-not-considered person as the most likely identity of the mysterious girl-who-apparently-actually-liked-Eddie-at-some-point at the moment.

March continues to be a good month. Weird.

Yep... as of right now (which is... something like two-thirds of the way through the month), I have not had a single bad day in all of March.  That hasn't happened... well, basically ever--I've had good months/semesters/years before, sure, but they usually had some bad days scattered among them too.  But nope... March 2014 has just been an abnormally good month the whole way through.  I haven't even really had a "starts off bad but gets better" day, or even a "gets bad for a while, but before and after the bad part were good" day (there was one a while ago that sorta came close for a few seconds, but... eh, not quite enough to drop me back down into feeling crappy again.  It was more of a "mildly annoyed for a little while" kind of day even at its worst moments, and I recovered pretty quick, no sitting at home dying of boredom/loneliness or anything.)  Let's hope that keeps up for the rest of March and hopefully into other months, too.

But yeah... so far, still trying to find a job.  Have sent in another (the 11th) job application and have signed up for this agency that tries to find jobs for people in the area.  Still selling old games and such on eBay in an attempt to make some extra money until the whole job thing happens (I suspect that the Super Nintendo games are going to sell pretty well--looking at previous eBay sales from other people, I see just the cartridges alone for some games selling for $20-$30 pretty frequently, so I suspect having the boxes still intact for mine will help them get even higher than that.  I have two of them up there for sale now, one of which already has been bid on... may add more games later.)  Still working on that painting I've been working on for weeks, but it is almost done at this point--I just need to go back to it for a bit and finish up a small section of the background before it'll be completely done.  I'm thinking of making a sort of vaguely grassy background behind where Joguo and Arkusazzo are, since originally I planned on making their background area resemble the hill where Joguo's house is located.  That will probably extend back behind the Swarm also, since most of them are based out of a nearby area to where Joguo lives, even though there's no real connection between them.  I may just end up leaving Bunprego's area blank white, since he's close to where Damuru-J (with her vaguely blue-esque off-white cloudy mist stuff surrounding her) is located.  Plus he tends to get whites and very pale yellows associated with him most of the time, and the Okédoké team already has a yellowish background, so white is pretty much the only thing that would make sense for him that isn't already taken.  I've finished a drawing I've been working on for a while lately, just need to get it scanned in sometime soon (hopefully I can find a time when Ruth isn't too busy and borrow her scanner, since my dad's scanner back home no longer works... or at least, the computer doesn't recognize it, so the USB port connecting them may be busted.)  Also making progress on reading the first not-required-for-class book I've ever checked out of the SVU library, though probably not as quickly as I could (I tend to not spend much time just sitting around by myself, so reading doesn't happen as often as it probably should.)

Spring break actually went pretty well for me this year.  I bumped into a bunch of friends (some were indeed gone, but it seemed like a lot of the friends I've known for a while--and a few more recent ones--were still here after all, so it wasn't as abandoned around here as I thought it might be) and I don't think I really had any days where I was just bored to death with nothing to do--just a whole lot of days where I ended up hanging around with a few friends for a pretty long time, and several where even when I got home I wasn't quite "alone" because I ended up talking to friends online some, too.  Ended up getting to know one friend that I've sorta-kinda-known for a while a lot better than I did before, and it basically turned out that the more I found out about her, the more interesting she seemed and the more I wanted to know.  Eventually ended up trying to ask her on a date, but that didn't quite work out.  It was kind of odd, though--she technically didn't say no, I guess... but she did come out and say that she didn't think there were any feelings there between us (specifically on her end), and then we just ended up talking for another 10-15 minutes or so and I basically forgot to even bring up if a date would be possible or not.  It actually never got really awkward or anything, it was more like just... "oh, you're not interested in that way, okay, let's keep talking as if nothing happened."  I'm glad it turned out that way, though--asking someone on a date is seriously hard for me, and I hate when it makes things really awkward (like the one time I asked someone to the homecoming dance and then she basically started avoiding me... yeah, really hope it doesn't happen like that again.)  I really appreciated how honest she was about it, too--if someone's going to basically reject me, "calmly tell me exactly how she feels about the situation without freaking out or making it super awkward, then go back to normal conversation afterward" is pretty much the absolute best way to do it.  I mean, I'd rather just get a "yes" of course, but if I'm going to get a "no" it would be great to get that kind of "no," the kind that somehow manages to make me still feel pretty good about asking even if I didn't get a "yes" (rather than sort of breaking down over it or just being kinda disappointed.)  I think just continuing on talking afterward like nothing weird had happened at all helped a lot.

I'm still unsure if I was even really interested in her that way (the "date" I had in mind would've probably been more of a "let's get to know each other better" sort of thing, sort of like the last one I actually went on was) in the first place, but I suspect I might've eventually ended up heading in that direction.  It's hard to say, I can never really see that sort of thing coming very far ahead of time.  It's usually like "oh hey, a new friend, she seems like an interesting person" at first and then only drifts into "holy crap I really like this person" months later (or a month later, in some cases, but it usually takes a lot longer than that)... sometimes sort of gradually building toward that in a way I can pick up on (where at first it's "hey, I might kinda like her" before reaching the "holy crap" phase), other times just coming out of nowhere and hitting me all at once.

Speaking of crushes coming out of nowhere and hitting me all at once, I actually got to talk to a friend I hadn't really seen much in a while today.  Went down and got some pizza from Domino's using this coupon that one of SVU's executive council candidates randomly gave me, then just talked and goofed off for a while.  Funnily enough, a random stranger in Domino's ended up joining in on the conversation and many fangirl squeal noises were made between the two of them (since it turns out they were both really into a lot of the same things.)  She also shared a bit of her cheesy bread, which is always nice.  Apparently this girl we both met in there was still in high school, which was kind of a surprise--it was rare enough to bump into a high-school-age person that I could actually stand talking to even when I was still in high school!  It turned out to be a pretty good trip/meal... lots of talking and general goofiness, and several new additions to the random quote list (including one from one of the guys working at Domino's, telling us to take our goofing off outside. XD)  But anyway, later on the topic of me seriously liking her earlier this semester actually came up... and apparently she already knew about it.  To the point where I didn't even manage to get my full bringing-it-up sentence out before she said so.  Apparently she had sort of known/suspected this before I even did (I didn't really become aware  that I liked her in that way until... right around the end of January, maybe the very beginning of February), which was kind of odd.  Mentioning it didn't seem to make things too awkward though (...it probably helps that I've pretty much lost interest and that she has a boyfriend now, so there's no chance at all of anything actually happening XD), and apparently she would've had a problem with the age gap anyway so it's probably a good thing that I didn't end up bringing it up with her before this point after all.  But still, it's kind of nice to actually be able to answer one of my lingering "what if?" questions for once, rather than just kind of letting them drop off into who-knows-where after months or years of never even mentioning that they were ever a thing in the first place.  I also may end up getting to see Frozen at some point, since apparently her boyfriend has it, so if that ends up happening I'll finally get what the heck people are talking about when they repeatedly make tons of references to that movie. XD

...and now I'm talking about stuff out of order, heh... weekend first and then the week.  Anyway--the past week or so has been pretty good.  Last weekend I got to see a few friends from way back in my first semester/year here who I hadn't seen much (or at all) in a while.  Ended up going to one of the SVU lacrosse games randomly, mostly just sitting around and talking during it rather than paying too much attention to the actual game (though I was sorta kinda able to follow what was going on during the times I did pay attention.)  Ended up getting a bit of a sunburn, but not bad enough that it went beyond the "skin gets red and maybe a little itchy" stage.  We left halfway through and then just walked around talking about all kinds of random stuff for a while.  It turns out that one of them (who was the girl whose lost iPod I found randomly lying in the fields a while back) isn't even going here anymore (she was visiting during this past week), and the other is about to go on a mission at the end of this semester.  It's kind of weird how so many people I know are going off away from school after this semester's over, between the graduating people and the people leaving on missions... it doesn't seem like there's as many of them as last year of course, but then again last year was the year when most of the new friends I'd made that year suddenly vanished to go on missions (and some graduated, too) by the time it was over.

Speaking of seeing old friends, actually ended up getting a ride to Wal-Mart from a friend I met way back in community college.  There aren't many from back then that I'm really still in touch with... partly because a lot of people I never really got to know that well in the first place, partly because I've been mostly horrible at actually keeping up over Facebook.  But yeah, that turned out pretty well.  It's nice to have someone to talk to during those trips to the store, makes them a lot less boring than they usually are.   Also somehow managed to get a ton of food without making myself go completely broke--I now have enough pancake mix to last me for probably another month or so, and also a bunch of other stuff that I hadn't really gotten before (or hadn't gotten very often.)

This week has also involved a lot of random concerts/recitals.  Two people's junior/senior recitals in a row, actually, which I went to (and took tons of pictures during)... and then the "SVU Idol" thing afterward, where a bunch of people (including a couple of friends *waves to Maddie and Xandra, since I know you guys actually read this thing now* and a whole bunch of strangers and near-strangers) got up on stage and sang/played instruments/both.  There's another concert of some sort at school tonight at 8:00, but I'm unsure if I'm going to make an attempt to go to that one since I know basically nothing about it and don't know if any of my friends are even going (or if it's even a free thing, for that matter.  I can't really be paying for these sorts of things until I end up getting a job or another extra stash of money from home.)

And, though this isn't entirely a "this week" thing, I've made a new friend lately that I've never actually met in-person.  That's kind of a new thing for me (usually, people I only communicate with online never really leave "uh, that's just some random person from the Internet" status and actually get to the point where I consider them friends), but I figure if I get along with someone really well it doesn't really matter where/how we "met" to begin with.  Kind of an interesting situation--we talked a bit on OKCupid first (that'd be the online dating site I'm signed up with... I think I've made a few vague mentions of being on one of those before on this blog, but I don't think I'd specified which one until now) and actually had an OKCupid message conversation that felt like a conversation, not just... some random person from the Internet answering my questions, and me struggling to come up with something else to say afterward.  To make it even better, she sent me the first message, which doesn't happen often (and when it does, it's usually an obvious spambot, someone who didn't read my profile at all, or someone who's at least mildly creepy; there have been very few exceptions.)  We're actually friends on Facebook now, which up to this point has been a thing reserved for people I've known in real life (and even then, I'll only add people I've talked to several times and can remember their name/face without any trouble, at the very least... not just "any random person who bumped into me at least once" like some people apparently do.)  But yeah... actually feeling like you're talking to an actual person about stuff even without the help of things like facial expressions, tone of voice, and so on is not something that happens to me very often (I think there's only been two, maybe three times where I've really felt like I was able to get to know someone entirely through text-only communication... and in one of those cases it was someone I had met before, but just hadn't gotten to know very well), so I think I can make an exception to the "only people I've actually met" rule in this case! XD

Also found out recently that apparently they're giving away free downloads of Pokémon X and Y this month to anyone who registers their 3DS pin number and the number of one game from a certain list (which included Super Mario 3D Land, a game I actually have.)  I wasn't really planning on getting either of them anymore, but hey, if they're giving them away for free... then I think I might actually look into that.  I suspect I'd have to go back home and get the box my 3DS came in to do it, though (since the card with the pin number should still be in there.)  I guess it's a good thing I never go registering my stuff on Nintendo's site right away, because if I had done so way back when I got the thing I wouldn't be able to get a free game unless I randomly bought another 3DS (which is... not going to happen anytime soon, let alone within this month!)

My memory is wonky.

Just looked over my first month or so of these blog posts from waaaaay back when I first came to SVU.  It's really odd how a few things apparently happened differently than I remember them, comparing my memories as of now to what I wrote down at the time.

No major differences or anything, but there were some strange little inconsistencies here and there.  Like when I was writing about how I'd ended up starting to like three different girls way back then... it turns out that the one I had always thought (and who I've repeatedly told people) had been the first one I started to really like might have actually been the second or even third girl I met here that drifted out of the "new friends" range and up into "hey I actually really like this person and might ask her on a date"... while one I've basically lost interest in by this point seems to have actually been the first one that really caught my attention.  I remembered that these three had been the first few that I ended up liking when I came here, but I had somehow gotten the order mixed up.

And reading back on those old posts kind of brought up some "what if I had picked someone different for first-girl-I-ever-asked-on-a-date?" thoughts now.  I mean, yeah, all that did end up happening as a result of the choice I made back then was pretty great and I wouldn't take it back for anything, and I think those few dates way back in October of 2011 were probably at least part of why/how we got to know each other so well and are still such good friends even now (even if dating/relationships/etc. aren't a possibility)... but I can't help but wonder how things would have gone if my first attempt at asking a girl on a date had been directed at someone else instead.  I mean, it's way too late to go back and try again now--I basically lost interest in this particular girl over a year ago now, and I have strong suspicions that she doesn't really have the best opinion of me and probably wouldn't consider going on a date with me for a second even if I did really still want to try... but the "how would that have gone?" thoughts are still there.

Well, this is an odd feeling.

And no, I'm not referring to the fact that I've consistently had nothing but good days since... well, right around the beginning of March really.  Though that still seems a little odd to me too, compared to how things were before.

What I'm talking about now is the feeling of, for the first time in a looooong time (...well okay, 2-3 years isn't that long, but still), not really having one or two or more girls that I have ridiculous crushes on that refuse to go away.  Earlier this week I finally managed to clear up one of the lingering "what if?" situations that's been following me around pretty much ever since late October of my first semester here at SVU (she's still not really interested in dating/relationships at all, and is unlikely to change her mind anytime soon, but amazingly enough bringing it up actually wasn't awkward at all and we're still really good friends), and a little while before that I managed to finally get over a more recent crush on someone else that seemed unlikely to ever turn out very well, especially after I ended up getting way too attached and waited too long to let her know and it sorta drove me nuts (would I still like to go on a date with her sometime? ...okay, yeah, to be honest I probably would if the possibility ever came up.  I suppose the feelings there are a little less gone than I'd like to admit.  But she's not constantly stuck in my head anymore and when she does briefly drift through there it doesn't end up making me kinda miserable anymore, so I'm okay with that. XD)

But yeah... after the "one major crush after another" sort of thing that's gone on the entire time I've been at SVU, it's so weird to not have anyone that's just... almost constantly in my thoughts like that.  I guess there are still a few people that are in that range of "hey, this person actually seems really interesting and I'd like to get to know her better and it might be nice to go on a date or something at some point" (one or maybe two have sort of popped up into that range just this week, actually...) and there's probably at least a few that could be hovering just outside that range (as in, I probably could end up liking them on some more-than-friends level but it hasn't gotten quite to the point where I really am aware of that so far)... but there just isn't anyone that I'm completely freaking obsessed with anymore.

And I guess that's probably a good thing.  If liking someone that much makes you feel nervous and uncomfortable and just generally awful rather than feeling better, I figure it's probably not all that healthy.

Hopefully in the future I won't get that attached to people anymore, at least not until after it seems like there's a chance it might not be completely one-sided.  Between that and my recent decision to go ahead and ask people on dates shortly after first getting the thought rather than waiting around forever, I think my luck may end up turning around a bit.  I mean, I can't predict the future, so it's hard to say for sure... but it seems like my biggest problem in the past hasn't been just "being single" (though yeah, I'd really like it if that would hurry up and end, too!) so much as the fact that I've always ended up in these situations where the feelings were definitely there on my end, but it was completely one-sided (or the other person only saw me as a friend and never anything more than that.)  And then when I get to the point where I think of asking someone on a date or otherwise letting them know that those feelings are there, I usually have ended up letting things "fester" for too long rather than just going ahead and doing it.  Honestly I think that even the opposite situation would work out better for me--if someone ended up liking me as more than a friend, but I didn't feel the same way about her.  I mean, I wouldn't be able to just jump straight ahead into a relationship or anything, but I think I'd be open to at least trying to see if those feelings might develop on my end of things after finding out that they're already there on her end.  Of course, so far I haven't really become aware of anyone liking me in that way (I have some suspicions, but considering how that sort of thing usually works out for me, it's probably just me making blind guesses and reading too much into things), but you never know.

In other news... this week as been a good week, surprisingly enough considering that it's spring break and a lot of people are not around.  The good side of that, of course, is that SVU is less crowded than usual and nobody's busy with classes so random visits to friends' houses are a lot easier to manage.  I actually haven't really been lonely at all this week, which kind of amazes me.  Went to a job fair thing on Tuesday over at the community college's Rockbridge Center, and ended up with a bunch of stuff to fill out in an attempt to get a job (or at least find stuff that may help me get a job.)  One of the websites I was referred to ended up being basically worthless because they apparently require you to have a car before they'll even make an attempt to help you find a job, so that was a little annoying... but I did manage to sign up for two other help-get-a-job sorts of things and I have one more left to try (plus at least one actual job application form--some company is going to be buying one of the local gas station/store places and they'll be hiring people after that, so I may end up being able to work there) so hopefully something will work out.  Also managed to have a really great lunch at Don Tequila's with a good friend afterward, and then bump into some other friends randomly later on the same day, which led to me hanging around at their house for several hours and watching an episode of Star Trek.  I'm getting pretty far on a painting that I've been working on for a while; just the lower-left corner is left completely unpainted at this point, though I may end up adding some more stuff in there before I finish it up.  Spent most of last night hanging around and goofing off with friends again (at first the same ones from Tuesday and then some different people later on)... yeah, I think that's the main reason why spring break has actually been good for me, the fact that I've been able to find friends to hang around with so consistently for once.

Holy crap. A good week? Those still happen? XD

Yeah... I was holding off on posting this for a few days so I could be absolutely sure, but after half the week's over already it looks like it's safe to say that this week is off to a good start! (...and a good middle, heh.) So far I've gotten a resume typed up for the first time ever, sent in another (the 10th) job application, paid my rent on time, did laundry (and the dryers actually got my clothes dry this time), gotten to talk to a few people, found out that I'll be able to visit home this weekend (while my little sister's going to be there, for once!), gotten some work done on a painting I started recently, learned the basic step of the tango at Social Dance Club, and... well, if I mention everything then I won't have anything to talk about for the rest of the post, so I'll just stop there for now. XD


To start off... this past weekend.  Probably would've been one of the best weekends in a long time if not for half of it (2/3 if you count Friday as part of the weekend) taking place while I was still feeling pretty crappy toward the end of February. And yeah, March 1st is not technically the end of February, but let's just call it February 29th for the sake of lumping that part of the year together rather than splitting it across two months.  But yeah, two days in a row I just happened to bump into some friends and actually have stuff to do up on campus, which worked out pretty well both times.  Though I wasn't feeling the greatest overall during those days, the time spent hanging around and goofing off with friends (both new and old) was definitely good.  And then Sunday morning came around and I found myself looking over old stuff I had posted on Facebook, for some reason.  Well, not that old since it was stuff from just last year, but still.  Anyway... I noticed that, oddly enough, I was actually feeling stuff from reading over these old posts.  Good stuff, mostly.  Lots of memories.  Doesn't normally happen when I'm just looking over old Facebook-posted stuff, but it did this time and next thing you know I'm typing up this giant rambling post about... everything, basically.  If you know me (and I'm assuming most of you reading this who aren't Russian spambots probably do) then you probably saw that, and it'd be silly to repeat much of it here, so I won't.

But yeah... I think I really needed to do that, to just let out this random explosion of feelings (...and for once it was mostly good ones!) and just let people know that they're appreciated and bring up some of those good memories again.  And I'm not 100% sure, but I think that might've been a big part of what finally got me out of the funkiness I'd been in for the last week or two of February (bumping into a friend I hadn't seen for a while later on the same day, then going for a long walk, and later on going to the fireside up at school probably helped too.)  At the time it seemed like it had to have been all February, because it seemed like every day or two felt like a week in itself... stuff just seemed to be going by so weirdly slow all the time, everything was dragging on forever.  I'm guessing part of that was because I had kind of developed a bit of a crush (...okay, calling it "a bit" of a crush is probably a massive understatement) on someone here at school and instead of just asking her on a date as soon as the thought came up (or at least within a few days of that!) I had to make my usual mistake of thinking too much about it and it ended up getting dragged out so long that it took me... well, I'm honestly not sure how long it actually was, but it felt like the process of "decide whether or not to actually try and ask her" had to have been a couple weeks in itself, and then the "okay, I'm going to try and ask her the next time I really get to talk to her" phase felt like another couple weeks.  Of course, there weren't that many weeks in February (especially if you're trying to fit them in between the 7th-8th or so and the 28th), so I'm guessing things went by a lot faster than they seemed to be going by at the time.  But yeah... after Sunday morning, all of my stressing out over being unable to ask this girl on a date basically vanished, first only coming up as a few blips occasionally and eventually going away entirely.  The only time that's ever really happened so suddenly before has been... well, when I've managed to actually ask someone on a date after stressing out over it.  But of course, that isn't what happened this time.  I managed to "recover" on my own, somehow.  Weird.

HOWEVER... speaking of asking people on dates, oddly enough that actually did happen recently! It just... wasn't the same girl I was referring to above, heh.  It's so weird how it happened this time; it was very much unlike how this sort of thing usually works for me.  I could almost say it was completely the opposite.  Almost, because completely opposite would mean that I'd asked a total stranger on a date and I don't think I'd ever be able to (or want to) do that. XD

But yeah... usually, how the first attempt at asking someone on a date works for me is I get to know someone really well and then slowly build up some sort of feelings for her and then eventually get the thought that maybe I should try asking her on a date sometime (...and then struggling horribly with it for days/weeks >_<)  It's definitely a great feeling when (...if) I actually ask and she actually says yes (and so far, I've only really gotten two outright rejections, oddly enough... maybe three, if you count one that started out as a "maybe" and then transformed into a "no" later... four if you count "said yes initially but then checked schedule and realized she was too busy after all with stuff she had forgotten about at first."  But only two of them didn't even give me a chance in the first place for one reason or another, so I'll only count those two as real rejections), but that doesn't change the fact that the stuff leading up to it (well, the "actually trying to ask her on a date" parts anyway) is pretty much torture most of the time.  I say "most of the time" because there was one attempt waaaaay back in December of my first semester that actually wasn't hard for me, oddly enough.  And because asking someone the second (or third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth...) time is a whole lot easier than the first-ever attempt, especially if it isn't very long after the first attempt. XD

Anyway... this time things happened a lot differently than usual.  I was just talking to someone I had talked to a few times before and I guess you could say "kinda-knew" (we hadn't been able to have much in the way of full-length conversations, due to the fact that she was usually busy working when I saw her) after the fireside Sunday night and somewhere mid-conversation I just randomly had the thought to ask her on a date pop into my head.  Of course, I really can't do split-second decisions like that so rather than risking being super awkward and asking her right there, we just kept talking (me putting that random thought in the storage box labeled "well, that's really weird, that doesn't normally happen, I'll have to remember that" that exists somewhere in my mind) until eventually she had to head out.  The next day, I bumped into her in the library briefly and said hi, then went to do some other stuff for a while.  I saw her in the library again a bit later, but she looked busy so I didn't think it would be a good idea to bother her.  And then even later than that, I caught sight of her again and this time noticed that the headphones were off and she didn't look nearly as busy.  Walked up and said hi and after talking for a bit, I brought up that weird thought that had popped into my head the day before and... well, asked her on a date.  I even managed to use the word "date" itself, for only the third time out of all the attempts I've made in these past 3 years, because for once it wasn't awkward to fit it in.

...

And she actually said yes.  And pretty much immediately brought out her schedule to figure out what day she'd be able to do it and write it in there. (Needless to say, my whiteboard back home has had a similar marking on it ever since... though I'm sure I'd remember even without something sitting behind my laptop as a constant reminder. XD)  Not long after that we had figured out all the when/where/what details (which honestly is the easy part for me, once the asking part is out of the way my nervousness drops pretty much down to 0 after the initial "wait what she actually said yes?" shock wears off) and talked a bit more before I figured it would be a good idea to let her get back to what she was working on and head back home for a while.

I was pretty much unable to stop myself from smiling all throughout the day afterward.  Seriously, whenever I felt some of that old February funkiness drifting back in, all it took was a brief thought holy crap I'm actually going on a date (or more often holy crap I actually asked her on a date) and that other stuff was pushed away just like that. XD

Actually having a girl agree to go on a date with me has got to be one of the best feelings I've been able to experience so far.  I can't think of a single time when this has happened that it didn't leave me with this lingering feeling of general amazingness that lasted for at least the rest of that day, usually into the next, sometimes all throughout the following week.  And I can remember every time, so I'm not forgetting some less-amazing time or something and only remembering the most notable ones.  Even getting a "no" usually isn't that bad (though it probably helped that the only two "just plain no" responses I've gotten were from people I'd not gotten that attached to yet; I knew them well enough and considered them friends and felt a bit more than that toward one of them, but not to any ridiculous extremes), and I think it's probably better to ask and find out than to have that nagging "what if?" thought stuck in your mind for basically forever.  It's possible to eventually get over that (it helps if you're able to actually lose interest, so even the good answers to the "what if?" are no longer all that appealing anymore) but it takes a while.  But yeah, enough about that, back to how great it feels when someone actually says yes.  This time it's definitely followed me throughout the rest of the week; I'm assuming this is because I started off from "doing pretty good" before I actually asked (and there were no failed attempts leading up to the one that actually happened this time!) rather than from somewhere in the pit of despair that trying (and repeatedly failing) to ask someone on a date usually drags me down into.  I've felt almost invincible this week, that's honestly the best way I can think of to describe it.  Even things that would normally risk throwing me back into a crappy mood seem like they can't touch me this week; when I was at Dance Club earlier tonight, I ended up staying the whole time and never felt anything beyond "short-lived mild annoyance" at the fact that there were so few people there and that they were doing the "watch other people do it/try to do the steps by yourself without actually dancing with someone so it just feels really awkward" method of teaching that just doesn't work for me (plus, I did get to learn something and practice a couple times before things shifted toward that direction, so overall it wasn't a waste of time.)  I'm not normally a really confident person but I've definitely felt a lot more like it this week.  I'm not going to mention her name on here because I don't know how she feels about the idea of publicly broadcasting who she's going on dates with (and honestly, I don't really like the idea of publicly broadcasting who I'm going on dates with, so even if she was perfectly okay with that I probably wouldn't do it anyway) but if by chance she's reading this: once again, THANK YOU! You seriously made my week, and we haven't even actually gone on that date yet as of the time I'm typing this. XD

To recap: this week has been pretty great and I've got a date tomorrow.  Or technically later today, since I went past midnight typing this up.  Oh well. XD