Pity Party (revisited)

Yesterday was quite a low point on the old self-esteem scale. At one point, I started crying at the sight of an old high school classmate’s wedding pictures, because they were better than mine. Then it spiraled – she’s skinnier than me, she’s prettier than me, she’ll have a better life than me, where am I going in life?, why am I just an administrative assistant?, and on and on.

I found myself trying, with the help of my best friend, to find all of this other girl’s faults, so as to make myself feel better. Mature, I know. The only real criticism we could come up with was that they looked fake. As in, they look so good, they must be fake. And my pictures were more “real.” As in, they’re so mediocre, they must be real. (At least that was the disclaimer in my head.)

I realized that I’m frustrated with a lot of aspects of my life right now – career, future education, working on my health, and mostly – loneliness. I miss my friends, and am having trouble making new ones. A big part of it has been pure laziness, but I also think that part of the laziness has been a cover up for fear of putting myself out there. I’m not great at making friends. I’ve been lucky enough my whole life to be put in situations where good friends either fall into my lap, or are handed to me as friends-of-friends. Now that I’m a big girl in the working world, in a new town and new chapter of my life, it’s up to me.

So after a spell of self-pity and doubt, I made a couple of small steps – I joined the Facebook group for North Iowa Young Professionals, and fully intend to join their social functions as soon as they start up again in the fall. I also asked a new girl at work to join me for lunch. We ate together today, and it went really well. She is a little younger than me, but closer in age to anyone else I know on the College staff. We had a nice, although slightly awkward conversation, and agreed to meet for lunch again. I also plan to ask her to join me for a new employee reception coming up soon – maybe going to grab food beforehand, and then hanging out during the reception. We’ll see if she’s game.

So now for the scary, but rewarding part – I need to do the following to address my self-esteem concerns:

• Identify learning opportunities at work. Just today my boss encouraged me to look into classes, conferences, workshops, etc. that interested me.
• Truly start the application process for my graduate certificate. The biggest tasks I have now are writing a goals/interest statement and rounding up my letters of recommendation.
• I need to start seizing opportunities to make girl friends. I might start by inviting another couple to go out to eat or to a movie or something, and then try to get a group of girls together and hopefully create a group of friends.