Today was just one of those days where I feel invisible to the world! First maybe I should say a little about myself. I moved to a new city a little over 11 months ago now. I moved here for a new job without knowing a single person. While I enjoy being around people I've always had a really hard time starting conversations with people. As you may guess, this makes it incredibly hard to meet new people and make new friends. I've only recently started learning more about social anxiety disorder and realizing it's an issue for me.

I've always known that my issue is that I don't know what to say to people to start a conversation with them. I'm horrible at small talk and you can't really start a conversation based on mutual interest when you don't know anything about a person. This leads to me second guess everything I say and either never start the conversation or feel like a complete idiot for starting the conversation and struggle to keep the conversation going. So one thing I've been trying to do since I moved here is find some groups for people with similar interests as me. This has mostly been a failure as my anxiety prevents me from going to meet a random group of people. It's hard enough to try meeting 1 person, meeting an entire group of people at once is nothing short of teriffying.

However, the one thing I have found some success with is the gym, or more specificlly CrossFit. Say what you will about it but I found it a few years ago and enjoyed it for 2 reasons: motivation/competitiveness and the sense of community. I love going because everyone is friendly, cheers each other on, and engage in a little gym talk. So I know some people there and we will talk a bit, but that's the extent of our relationship. That's unfortunate but I'd be more okay with it if it weren't for the fact that some of those people have became very good friends despite being there less time than I have; but I've never been invited to do something outside of the gym. Yes, part of this is my fault, I could ask them if they wanted to do something sometime... I know that but it still hurts to see the same people I talk to becoming friends and not being included.

Maybe I should get back to the main point of feeling invisible now. Today I went to one an open gym time and some of the people I usually talk to were there but not one of them said a word to me. They were all talking with each other, joking around, and working out together; but not one of them even acknowledged my existance. Again... I could have strated conversation with them, but I just felt like I would be intruding. Honestly the only interaction I had with anyone the entire time I was there, that didn't have to do with whether or not I was using a piece of equipment or not, was a brief exhange coach. You know, one of the the people that are paid to be there and to exchange pleasantries with the members.

I was pretty down by the time I left and got me thinking about all the other things that make me feel invsible. I've recently been trying to start doing some volunteer work lately and I contacted the organization about it. I got a pretty immediate reply that I had contacted the wrong person and they forwared me on to another person. A few days went by with no reply so I decided to contact them again just to be sure my message hadn't been overlooked. Once again I recieved a pretty immediate reply letting me know they had been busy but they would contact me at the beginning of the next week. Well, it's been over a week since they said they would contact me and I still haven't heard anything. I'm tempted to contact them again but I don't want to be annoying and I just feel like it shouldn't be so hard to volunteer for something. I've also had a similar experience with very slow replies from customer service with a business I'm currently dealing with, but I guess that could probably just be chalked up to poor customer service. The final thing I thought of was dating sites. I've tried using a few different sites to meet someone with little to no success. I always put effort into my profile and I even step out of my comfort zone and contact others first sometimes, I just spend way too long figuring out what to write haha. Point being, I hardly ever get a reply or someone deciding to contact me first. Even with my low self-esteem I would say I'm decently attractive, and I've only had a handfull of interest over about 2 years.

Anyway, that's all I got. Like I said, it was just one of those days. I'm sure I'll feel better in the next day or two. I'm not sure if anyone will read this, if they will care, or if I will just sound whinny and self-pitying; but I don't have anyone to talk to about it so I felt like this would be a good way to vent.