Just Trying to Find My People

All my life, I’ve been trying to figure out why I am the way I am. I guess that’s what everyone is asking. It’s the question at the heart of every piece of fiction–who am I? But the whole reason we ask ourselves this question is that we’re trying to find out what we can do about it. Where do we fit in? Who is our tribe? Who are our people? Like the ugly duckling that keeps getting rejected by every social group, not knowing it belongs with the swans.

Before, I talked about how difficult it is to make friends because no one seems to be interested in the things I am. In high school, students did a matchmaker thing and my compatibility percentages were 50% lower than most other students. In a previous job, I attended a seminar-icebreaker thing. I don’t remember what it was for, project management or personality matrix stuff. At one point, we were supposed to divide ourselves into four quadrants based on worker personality or something. Out of sixty people, I was the only one in my square.

I always feel like an observer, not a participant. Unwelcome, uninvited. An interloper who ruins everyone’s fun when he tries to join in. The only place I really feel comfortable is at a computer. But working at a screen may have an expiration date, unless I start typing with a book on my head. My body’s betraying me. I’ve had to go to physical therapy three times for different neck/back things from sitting at a monitor for eight hours for work, then X hours for writing, gaming, and whatever else. I have to do stretches twice a day just to get back to normal.

And like I said before, I don’t do things the normies do. I don’t do sports. I don’t get joy or relief from exercise. My brain doesn’t produce endorphins. It can barely produce the oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin I need to stay alive.

That includes watching sports. I have some minor loyalty to the Vikings and Twins and Wild, but that’s about it. Less so these days with the poor team management they’ve been doing (sure, we’ll trade Sam Darnold away so he can win a Super Bowl next year; Pohlad drops all the good players to sell the team, then fails to do so). I have no real connection to sports. If I weren’t looking for “the story” of each game, or if my wife didn’t like these teams, I wouldn’t pay any attention.

And the thing is, even among my people, I feel like an outcast. Most geek and nerd hobbies are skill-based. Being hardcore is rewarded with attention. No one cares if you can crochet a scarf; they care if you can crochet an entire xenomorph costume.

I feel like I have little… I guess you’d call them “obstacles”? Barriers? Handicaps? Mental blocks? Just something that stops me from excelling enough to be part of the crowd.

Like music. My wife tells me that if I had taken music in school, I would have fit in just fine. But A) I was too depressed/mentally sick to pick myself up like that. B) I felt/thought that if you didn’t join band when it was offered the first time, you couldn’t join it in the middle, because how would you read the music? And I’ve tried learning how. My dad had an electronic keyboard and lots of songbooks. I tried learning them, but eventually got bored. I just can’t get interested in music or playing an instrument.

I started learning bass guitar in college because my dad said it didn’t involve reading music. But I never really got good at it. It feels like my fingers can’t move fast enough to match my mind or the rhythm. People keep telling me I’ve got great fingers for piano or guitar, but I can’t move them like a musician would. Like how I couldn’t swim right because I couldn’t control my breathing like you should. Like when you’re in a car, you don’t think “I’m going to move my arm to pull the steering wheel right so the car will turn right.” You just think “I turn right” as if you were the car. I never could get to that point and that was frustrating.

Same with piano–we have a baby grand in our house, and while our kids were learning piano, I tried self-teaching with their books. My wife said that was the best way to learn how to read music. But I eventually gave up, because there were other things I preferred doing. I only have so much time in the day. And there wasn’t enough reward for it. I wanted to play with my wife, but we both misplay notes all the time and never get our timing right and it sounds stupid. Besides, what are we going to do? Go on the road like The White Stripes?

Plus, I hate repeating media because my memory is good. I don’t like seeing the same thing over and over and over, like a child obsessed with a movie. I get sick of playing the same songs over and over to get them right. There’s no feedback loop of a reward, so I stopped. Never could get into music, and I guess I never will.

I wish I had some friends that I could play RPGs with, but they just don’t seem to be around. It seems like they’ve already made their friend groups and are sticking with them, like molecules that don’t have any available valences. Maybe I should go on some kind of friendfinder or something. I keep getting advertised these things on Instagram, like Bumble BFF and StartPlaying.games and Dungeons Not Dating. But I’ve had bad experiences playing with random people.

There’s a game store right in my neighborhood, just a few miles away, but it feels unreachable/unapproachable for me. For one thing, most of the time, their events cost money. And they’re not things I’m interested in, like Pokemon, Lorcana, and Warhammer. Those are all about buying toys, maybe painting them, and learning complex rule systems. And that’s fine if you’re into that, but I can lose for free, thank you.

Maybe theater and drama class was a place for me, but I never entered that realm because my sister wanted to do that. So I stayed away, because she already had so little of her own. And my shadow in high school was large. Not gonna elaborate on that, but it encompassed her so darkly she moved to an Arts High School for her senior year. So I used my one brain cell with any empathy in it to avoid that scene. Plus, I’m not much into expressing big feelings.

Lots of geeks love drawing and art. My niece is one of them–makes great anime-style works full of color. Every family gathering, she’s got her face in her phone or sketchbook instead of talking to us (wait, maybe that’s not good). I did lots of drawing in high school, but that was more to kill time and for something to do while staying up late, watching Star Trek or listening to Loveline during the summer. But I never learned to draw properly. Not with the light sketchy lines and inking and perspectives and heads with plus signs on them. I always drew in one straight line, outlining what I wanted, then erased what needed tweaking. That’s not drawing in such a way that you produce a good product. One Christmas, I got a “how to draw manga” book. My results looked so hideous, I gave up after two tries.

But that was before the Internet. Now there’s such an influx of art that nothing can stand out. From stuff on DeviantArt and ArtStation and great drawers who shit out incredible cartoons. People like Cassandra Calin, Emi MG, Li Chen, s0s2, Beanie. I watch the DoodleGremlins channel on YouTube and they have such fun playing drawing games with each other and laughing and it looks like no effort. They come up with something quality–smooth and colorful and fun. Like with music, there’s some disconnect between my brain and my hands that they can’t quite do what I want them to do.

Same with painting. I’ve talked about trying my hand at painting miniatures. And my results were about what I expected for someone trying for the first time, and I was fine with that. I knew I wasn’t going to be good right away. But now I’m trying to do advanced techniques and it’s just not working. And there’s no one here who can tell me what I’m doing wrong. I’m trying to make colored metal and it just looks like junk, no different from when I was an eight-year-old doing watercolors. I play the instructional videos over and over, and I just can’t make my brush do what the guy is doing.

You’d think, being a writer, I could join a book club, but book clubs are for women. It sounds sexist, but that’s the way it is. Men aren’t welcome there. They’re for women to have somewhere to go that’s not with men. Somewhere, they can feel safe and be themselves, not a subservient housewife. Like how guys have golf and “gentlemen’s clubs”. Tried looking for writing clubs/critique groups, but there are none around this area. I said before that there are no writing conferences in Minnesota.

I’m not even a very good writer, apparently. I mean, not to the point where anyone wants to publish me. So I can’t even claim skill in that. I’m not “in” with the crowd of published authors and am merely an amateur. And besides, no one’s interested in a critical intent-to-be-published evaluation of their work. They don’t want a critique; they want a hug. And I don’t want to change my harsh but fair style of critique. Because I would want them to do the same to me.

Same with fan fiction. I don’t write what people want to read. And that’s not because I’m avant-garde or something. I want to write stories, but people just want fan pairings. They want to see sex scenes between same-gendered characters that don’t have anything in common. Sites categorize works by the romantic relationship, not by genre or quality. Seems like writers gain a small group of dedicated fans who then pressure you to put out the next chapter, then complain that it’s not what they wanted/expected you to write. And besides, fandom is a toxic environment. All they do is argue and bicker until the mods throw up their hands and close down the whole forum. Like they’re pretending to be amateur literary professors with beef who write letters in the paper to each other.

PC building and programming? That’s my job. I don’t want to do that in my off-hours. Besides, the fact is, I’m just not a very good programmer. I’ve worked with people who seem like geniuses, architects. People who went on to work at places like Amazon and Microsoft. And I’ve always been amazed by their ability to understand complex systems like a snap. Same in college, everyone caught onto coding earlier than I did. I still don’t feel I have the hang of it. I don’t know how to fix software, but I know how to fix this company’s software.

Video games? Everyone plays video games. But there are so many, how can you find someone you’re going to play with over and over? It’s like streaming services, everyone’s on something different. And besides, I’m not competitive enough to play games like Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, League of Legends, Fortnite. I get yelled at because I don’t know the right way to play the game. The right upgrades to get. The right build to use. E-sports and speedrunning, not interested. That also involves doing the same thing over and over and over. MMORPGs? Too much dedication of time. Retro games? Let the past be the past. Playing Super Mario Bros. now, I’m only satisfying a nostalgia meter, nothing else.

Every time I go to a social event involving any of my interests, I always feel like I don’t belong. Like I’m interrupting someone else’s good time. Who’s this intrusive fellow? He’s not part of our friend group. Like, you had to make friends in your school years, and if you didn’t, you lost your chance.

Like, I went to the MN Renaissance Festival this year. These should be my people. They like pretending, they like crafts, they like swords-and-sorcery. Yet walking around, I feel like I didn’t want to… do anything. There were shows, yeah. But I didn’t want to hit anyone with a tomato. I didn’t want to fence with balloons. I didn’t want to buy any leather purses or goblets or chalices or candles. And I certainly don’t need face paint or toys. It just seems like it’s all useless stuff that wouldn’t fit our house’s decor.

I spend all day in my basement. All my hobbies are solitary. Writing, painting miniatures, games. I don’t play multiplayer games, mostly single-player (except Deep Rock Galactic). I play board games by myself. I play solo RPGs by myself. And as I get older, I feel more and more like this is what my life is going to turn out to be. Every so often, I think about what the issue is. Maybe I have social anxiety.

Yet, my social anxiety isn’t THAT severe. I recently went to a wedding where the groom had such bad social anxiety that there was no receiving line. So we were all wandering the lobby of the church, confused like kittens in a cardboard box. Which means people are either getting less afraid to ask for what they want, even if it’s not socially acceptable, or we’re getting worse as a society.

My point is, even with the nerd hobbies, I’m no good and I don’t fit in. There’s nothing I can produce that people don’t already have and better. Nothing I can bring to the group. Mediocre at programming. Mediocre at art. Mediocre at music. Mediocre at games. I might be interested in crochet-style cosplay, but worsted yarn is very heavy and warm. And I don’t know enough about crochet to be able to make my own stuff yet. It would be like drawing–never getting it quite right. Like all my art falls into the uncanny valley. Maybe I’m falling into the uncanny valley. Am I human? Do I even belong in this world?