Always on the Outside Looking In

I’ve never really been what you might call part of the “It” crowd. I’m a big man, and was a big teenager. I’ve got a lot of fear of people, that has actually gotten worse as I age, but was never exactly easy for me. In High School, I found my way from one group of geeks and outcasts to another, never even quite falling into one particular group enough to really be part of it. Its okay. I was content to move with multiple groups and never really settle for any one clique. The whole business seemed unsavory too me.

As I moved into adulthood, and the access to multiple groups began to fade, I gradually grew more and more recluse. It was easier for me to be alone, than to actually belong to any one group of people. I am extremely fortunate, that I had managed to make a few friends that didn’t want to see me fall into some form of insane hermitude, even if I longed for it on a fairly regular basis.

Its an aspect of myself that I still need help with sometimes. I think my close friends worry about it more than they need to these days. I’v actually embraced the Social Networking thing pretty full on, especially Twitter. A while back I read a tweet that said, “Facebook is for the people you went to high school with, Twitter is for the people you wish you had gone to high school with.” I don’t think a truer statement has been made in the last decade. My twitter friends have even gotten me to do things like go to bars.

Now, I’m sitting at my desk, writing this blog, distracted occasionally by twitter, and realizing that I am really trying to become a member of another community. I’m trying to reach out to the world at large and grow a connection with more people on the internet. From here on MattSurfs.com, I’m trying to give a bit of myself to a creative community, and have had some success from that thanks to Reverb10. On my other blog, Screaming Voice of Reason I’m trying to build a community of people my age that are more aware of what goes on in our world than what they get on Facebook and Twitter.

I guess, as I get older, I’m becoming less of a hermit. Maybe there’s something to this being in the group thing after all.