I've got to make a relatively major change to my program's interface before Friday, and for no apparent reason my hardware isn't working correctly. (Not the computer, but the peripheral stuff the program uses.) So this will be fun. I'd like to have it all at what I call test-level A by the time I leave here Thursday, which is to say everything works correctly if used correctly. I'll worry about abuses of the software on Friday.
(Should I mention that I wish we had a real testing department over here? I loathe testing, I really do.)
So Matt and I had a talk yesterday about any number of things, including his dissatisfaction with the MeadeHall story and my burgeoning friendship with his best friend, and I learned and confirmed many things about my husband. My fears that he might be jealous about that friendship were entirely groundless, based on my projection of how I'd feel in the same situation rather than on any knowledge of Matt's feelings.
I would say it makes him a nobler person than I, and that might even be true, but I think what it really boils down to is this: he's an extrovert while I fall solidly into the introvert category.
A lot of people turn out to be surprised that I'm introverted, which is kindof funny. When I'm with a crowd of my friends, I'm among the loudest and most forward. In situations with well-defined etiquettes, like business meetings or job interviews, I'm very relaxed and open. So a lot of people who've never met me before think I'm a real extrovert. And people who've forgotten the first time they met me, or who met me when I was surrounded by a buffer zone of close friends, are always sortof surprised when I don't want to go out to do things or respond neutrally to meeting other new people. But the truth is, if I'm in a social situation and don't know at least three or four people there very well, I'm likely to wind up sitting in a corner somewhere talking to the wall.
Introversion may or may not have anything to do with self-confidence. I've been trying to change both over the past many years, and have made some progress. But not a lot.
And that's why, when two of my friends that have never met before get together and start getting to know each other, forming a friendship that isn't predicated on my interference, I get nervous and jealous. It's not that I want to be the center of their attention, but that if they become friends with each other, then they might forget about me. (It's not altogether absurd. It's happened to me with more casual friends.) And then, because at least part of my brain is rational and detatched at all times no matter what the situation, I realize that I'm being absurd and petty and selfish. Which makes me mad at myself. Which reduces my self-confidence, which makes me even more desperate to keep my friends to myself.
Really, sometimes, I'm not a very good person. Rationally, I know it's absurd. My real friends aren't going to stop liking me just because they met someone new. So I try to hide my feelings from them. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't - sometimes I get snippy and irritable. I think that's why I was projecting that reaction onto Matt. He's been sortof snippy and irritable for a while.
But I was wrong. He's been snippy and irritable about something else altogether, and we talked it over, and we're all fine now, I think. But he's a better person than I am, sometimes.
Word of the Day: canard - a false or unfounded report or story; especially a fabricated report
I wish I could get the word of the day without the example sentence, or with spoiler whitespace before the sentence or something. It happens at least twice a week that I'll open up the mail and read the word and its definition and then scan the sentence before closing it down. And then the only thing I can think of to talk about is that sentence.
Maybe it's a canard that I actually know what I'm doing, here...
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