Doing my thing...

I like to do my own thing. I have several "things" and at my best, I do my thing regardless of what others are doing. I like traveling, going to the movies, seeing jazz shows by myself. I like laughing my ass off at a comedy show by myself. Sometimes, I prefer doing these things alone because I truly like the unrestrained me. At a jazz show, being without someone interrupting with, "I'm going to the bar, do you want anything?" feels much more authentic. And while I love sharing laughter with people I love, I don't mind seeing comedy alone because then I don't need to wonder why the person sitting next to me is not laughing at an immensely clever joke (or worse, wonder how come the friend sitting next to me did laugh at a horribly offensive "joke"). I like bumming around in a country I have never been to alone because I blend in more easily than others (it's my ambiguously ethnic look and my ability to fake fluency in a foreign language until I run out of useful vocabulary), and I have an inherent sense of when to be spontaneous and adventurous and when to be safe.

I want more friends who know when to let me go and when to reclaim me -- people who go out and do their own thing, who sometimes invite me along, and sometimes explain without an apology that they're doing something alone or with another group of friends. I want more friends who know to call occasionally out of the blue just 'cause... I guess that's one reason I am on here, one reason I write to strangers persistently, one reason I thought it more productive to write all this down than grade another essay or two...

People who can let a woman do her thing are people worth knowing. People who can go and do their own thing unapologetically as well are people worth knowing even more.