Friend Picker | Tu 11/29

I woke up tired but went to my meetings. I also had another "too late to go into the office" realization so I'm staying home. I sure hope it didn't do anything to ruin me, but no one is taking about it so far.

I tried to kill time in my meetings by doing required trainings and they were soul sucking. I don't miss the feeling of taking an online quiz and slowly remembering the correct answers over several retakes.

Now I'm about to nap and the 6'1" girl is coming back into my mind. I can't run.

In natural form I napped for too long in the afternoon. At least I got those stupid trainings out of the way.

Shabab and Yumei think I should work on customer inquiries with supervision rather create the automation utility. I wonder what the others will think when they get back, but until then I have no tasks for the sprint. I should go into the office, but it'll be a good chance to actually do some work since I haven't done anything while being remote the past week.

I watched a lot of volleyball videos and started making my Hinge profile when I had to leave for rock climbing. Many people had to bail so it was just me, a guy Alec, and his girlfriend Cyan. Thankfully even though no one else was present to do the $25 for 2 people deal, they're both members and Cyan had her monthly guest pass for me. They were also both friendly and Cyan was very new to climbing, so it was nice trying routes with others and getting advice on how to approach them.

Eventually I found myself failing routes with holds that require some grip strength, maybe because of my combination of heft and weak fingers. Near the end I also lost a tiny patch of skin on the surface of one of my fingers, which made it hard to use my hand for holds. The worst part was using hand sanitizer on the way out. I actually recoiled my whole body in pain, which was unbelievable since it was for a small patch of my finger that never even bled.

Now I'm at home chilling, continuing to watch volleyball videos, and trying to plan out tomorrow. As much as I don't want to, I may get Outlook on my phone. I don't plan on checking my email, but the calendar would be nice to check without having to log into my computer every time.

I also muted the badminton chat earlier today. It's unbelievable how much time and money they spend together: always checking out newly opening restaurants, having spontaneous meals out even when they don't live anywhere nearby, and talking in the chat even when they're supposedly all busy adults. It makes the Haikyuu group chat look like a ghost town in comparison. They're all also clearly working adults. Today they joked about marriage, having kids, and receiving cars as gifts, which I don't think anyone in my stage of adulthood is thinking about.

As a fringe member, it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of banter, invitations to events, and poll updates from their chat. I'm almost tempted to leave since I know their badminton schedule and may never play it again. I guess I can understand why people like Emily enjoy the sport, but it doesn't feel nearly as fun. This seems to be due to several factors about the people:

• The group generally seems more interested in eating out and drinking than playing the game seriously
• It seems like most people in the group are either very casual or very sweaty
• Members of the group don't seem to know each other especially well. It's as if they all met a few months ago out of interest in explicitly making friends and don't have any strong friendships holding already anyone together.
• It's hard to justify spending time to make friends or play badminton when their schedule conflicts with volleyball (most of them play on Wednesdays, Fridays, and weekends) and they're far away

I guess it comes down to the people in the end and this group happens to have a lot of factors that make it harder to invest into them.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing, but I realized I'm content on the friend front and want a girlfriend now.