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
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