My membership in groups has always been more transient than I would like. Recently a friend (Alpha ST) had her birthday and celebrated with her friends. I felt off and this got me thinking if I really wanted to join their group in the first place. Do I want to be invited to do things with them? Is the reward worth the effort?

When I was younger, I might have enjoyed hanging out with good-looking (and thus high status) people. I still do. But I used to, too (cryptic joke here). For dating, I’m looking for the sweet spot in the intersection of attractiveness and interestingness. For friends, interestingness and availability will do.

Not that I’m currently overwhelmed by my small group of friends anyway. I don’t go out as often as I’d like and I have a number of slots available. Anyway, if we vibe and you like whatever I say, hit me up and we should meet.

I went to a party in Dec 2020 and felt like I had crossed a threshold of sorts. I wasn’t afraid to voice my opinion or direct the conversation. In fact, one of the guys I vaguely recall feeling intimidated by a year ago liked me so much he invited me out for drinks! We became good friends after that. He was trying to make everybody comfortable by telling jokes and all I did was to join in and support his efforts.

I didn’t know when was it but the number of obstacles in my life have been dwindling. Several pieces have clicked together and I am more focused than I have ever been. It may be because I have made progress on non-linear hard problems. Think of it as mining for years only to hit gold. Even Grand Problems like making friends seemed to have been slowly chipped away. I have all these people around me but I’m not doing anything with them. I’m not active on WhatsApp chatting with them. I don’t try to arrange activities with them. On second thought, I’ll save that for another post.

I don’t shy away from asking for help for even the most trivial things like “Could you bring some toilet roll over here?” I have always been more of a giver but now I’m not afraid to call in favours. This ties in with not being afraid of instructing people what to do. You know that space where you’re telling people what to do and they’re protesting and asking rhetorical questions. The old me would have answered that and got distracted. But what happened yesterday was I summarised the explanation and continued on with giving instructions. The end result was excellent.

With that said, let’s make it clear unearned leadership is bad. I don’t mean having people at your beck and call. No, you have to win their trust first before you tell them to do things. I have also become more decisive by trying to spend less time on deciding things. I also think my selfie game has improved :p

Last updated: 25 July 2021