Small observations after-party

We had a small party at our apartment earlier tonight. I do love my friends and family a lot. And so I'm always pleasantly surprised that there are still people that I don't hang out regularly with -- or even irregularly with -- but see once maybe a couple of years, that can still bring pure, unadulterated joy in my life. Some people are just fun like that, and the fact that I have them in my life means I'm probably not a lost cause, yet.

I'd rather hang out on one-on-one or two-on-ones with friends over a course of a year or whatever, over seeing them maybe four times a year, but with twenty people around. Maybe the latter is better to keep your network alive, but I feel more connected when I do the latter. Not sure if the hung-out persons feel the same way, should probably figure that out first, haah. Regardless, the party tonight was fun, but it was a whirlwind, and I didn't have any conversations with anyone until we ran out of things to talk about, waited a bunch, and came up with new topics to talk about. It's after the initial couple of bouts of lull that you start exposing yourself emotionally, and searching within yourself for facts and conversations you feel comfortable in sharing with them. I may know the general facts and statistics about a lot of people, but I could just as well have found that out from others, or from facebook. I networked, but I didn't connect, to use the most recent bullshit cliche that people haven't gotten around to overusing yet.

The above is true for women in my life obviously, and just as true for everyone else. Because it's no fun when you don't have even a little bit of serious conversations, and your 'stock conversation topics' are enough to fill the empty space between you. It's what my cousin does when we talk over the phone: she keeps lulling and exhausting the conversations until we've run out of things to say, and then start all over, but with much juicier and interesting topics the second time around. It's an interesting conversation tool to have, and I'm not very good at that. Need to figure that out better.

This is unrelated to any of the points mentioned above, or any of the things I learned today. It's becoming clearer to me by the day that people's expectations from life can be very different, even if they've been brought up under very similar circumstances. I've been finding things people want out of their partners, relationships, people in their lives, somewhat surprising, but that's all on me, for failing to understand that cliches are that for a reason, and most people are comfortable with expecting what they're expected to expect. Sounds such bullshit I know, but made me think the other day. It's not like I was an inconsiderate buffoon expecting my friends to have same expectations as myself, but I just figured, since we're so similar, maybe they wouldn't have umm very particular sets of interests...not them I thought, it's too hard/ for them to consider as a realistic option. Apparently not so. Life has a tendency to beat over people's heads until they cry in submission, and there's nothing shameful or disappointing about it. We want from life what we want from it, and all series and combinations of such expectations are just as valid.