Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Calling Cool Chicas

Today, is another lazy day.  I am willing myself not to eat chocolate while I bum around the apartment.  I've been off my usual running schedule for a couple of months and am trying to get back into shape.  Yesterday, I managed to do more than 10K without too much trouble, which was incredibly relieving.  I chalk it up to the fact that I had a running buddy to keep me company.  Runs seem to be so much easier when there's someone to talk with.  "This American Life" podcasts use to keep me entertained and distracted enough, but now, they barely get me through 5K.  I'm hoping that with a new running mix --I've been listening to the same one for more than a year and it just doesn't do the trick anymore-- I'll be back in the game.

Yesterday's run got me thinking about friendships between single and non-single ladies.  I'm beginning to realize that they can be fraught with difficulties that may not be immediately apparent.  There is the issue of division of time.  Single friends want girls' nights out, weekends away, etc., while non-single friends need to make time for their honeys.  Someone is bound to feel neglected and resentful.  And then there's is jealousy, which is poisonous and corrosive and ultimately makes me run for the hills.  Why is there so much subversive competition between women?

Finding lasting friends in Bangkok has been a huge feat that I have yet to accomplish.  I am a bit older than the transient newcomers who arrive with fresh excitement for life in a foreign city and a drive to instantaneously create a social life for themselves.  I played that role three-and-a-half years ago.  I was out most nights at networking events at the hippest new bars; I was dancing the night away at clubs; I was going on dates; and I was putting myself out there with fervor!  I eventually got burned out around the time I began dating T, a year after I arrived.  Never having been much of a drinker and with a propensity to being a morning person and a runner, I just wasn't cut-out for the party girl persona.  I ahve tried friendships with girls who have carried on the hard-drinking, hard-partying girls, but they're just not people I click with. 

I'm a bit younger than the trailing spouses, newlyweds, and mothers and, given where we are in our lives, I find it difficult to relate to them.  Let it be known that I have tried.  I've gone to their bookclubs and networking meetings, but so far, it's been a no-go, folks.  I yearn for my college or grad school girls who are smart, snarky, empowered, ambitious, healthy, down-to-earth, and would choose girls' nights of dinner and wine or an indie flick or even a game night over dancing to pounding nnnsss-nnnsss music at clubs where conversation is totally out of the question.  I realize I sound like an old fuddy-duddy.  And I'm embracing it.

Where are these women?  They must exist somewhere in Bangkok.

In the meantime, I will remind myself to enjoy life as it is now (easy since it happens to be quite good).  And remind myself that if I were in the US, I probably wouldn't live somewhere where I could see this almost every evening from my balcony:


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