The Hermit's Fellow

I don't have many friends, and of those I do have, I have chosen to keep in my life for good reasons. This might be why I don't have many friends. I'm picky about the people I have around me. I like them honest and courageous, intelligent(level headed) and honorable, and of course humorous and loving. I might hang out with people who I don't trust at social get-togethers, but I'll never really bring them into my life. Gossip, lies, smalltalk and validating insecurities with a like wise guilty friend doesn't do it for me and has no place in my life. I like to help people and I'll never push anyone away who needs or wants help until they are a threat to me or mine, but I won't bring you in to our close group either until I can trust you or if you just happen to interest me that much. Basically, if you're my friend, you're in my group, our little family, and I want to know I can trust you when the shit hits the fan.
I'm critical of people and waring of their motives and honesty. I wasn't born with a critical eye, I grew it over time. I'm critical of people because at one time I was naive and trusting and I saw what happens when you take someone at face value. It hurts, it sucks, but to a degree, it's avoidable. This means that I'm also not so open to new people. I'm not one to turn you away if I don't know you, but the whole time, I'll be trying to figure you out and will be careful of my decisions with you. I don't bring you in, I don't let you in, and though I wish it weren't true, most of the time I'm not excited about the people I meet and I don't have the interest in bringing them into my life anyway. I'd love to build our group up with cool, down to earth, strong willed people from all walks of life, but we're all picky, and generally the picking is slim.
So it's strange to me that I met SW and that I'm so interested in talking with her now. I don't know if she'd be cool with me putting her name up online, so for now she's a mysterious acronym...oooohh.

I met SW by accident. I was trying to send an email to a friend of mine out here, and instead sent one to her. It happens to be that she has the same name. Instead of just deleting the email, she looked me up and found this blog (Hi), and to my amazement, not only found it interesting, but agreed with my post about women. I'll drop the eloquence for a while here to properly address the oddity of this. Holly fucking shit.
When I wrote that post I expected that the only response I'd get from it (if any at all) would be angry women yelling at me for not fully appreciating the role we've played in blah blah blah, and why it's okay to do less or how the solution is making it easier for women in the workplace rather than women simply working harder to get there. I did not however, expect to hear another woman tell me it could have been written by her. This greatly increases my hopes for the future, of not only for womankind, but for my life in particular in that maybe our group won't have to be so lonely forever.
We enjoy our conversations and endeavors on theory, philosophy (if you could call it that) and self improvement and throwing insecurities and excuses to the side, but sometimes it does get lonely, and I know we've all daydreamed of being able to relate with others on these things. I'm not even talking about her relating on a philosophical level or jumping on board with one of our more out there ideas. This is actually a pretty simple subject, it's just not seen that way by the general public.
I guess I'm lonelier than the guys in this group if you think about it. The chances of finding a like minded man is far greater than finding a like minded woman and I've conceded to not having any female friends in my life, but it doesn't mean I haven't' wanted it. I remember the advantages to female friends in the past, how we can sympathize and support each other, but after a while so much other shit got in the way. I believe there can be something equally (but differently) powerful in a female friendship on that level, but I generally don't hold my breath.

I generally don't jive well with my generation or my gender, and often my species, but more so with the first two. I've given up on it, but I still have that seed of hope in there, because there are a lot of women out there and a lot of people from my generation, and wouldn't it be great if all those people woke up and pushed a little harder? That'd be a whole lot of push.

Of course, SW isn't from my generation, but that wouldn't' be likely, now would it? I do know some pretty stellar people from my generation, but take a wild guess how many of them are female?.....slim pickings.
She has her own company with her husband and from the looks of it works her ass off doing environmental work, she's a dork (always a plus), she's 55 but still in great shape, so that means she didn't take the chick excuse or the age excuse to take the easy American path of degeneration, she's intelligent, opinionated and I haven't seen any crazy yet. (Not that I don't have my portion of crazy) Not too shabby for a stray email meeting. It's very very strange to me that I'm talking with her and that I'm interested in talking with her. It's indefinably strange to me that when I've been looking and scoring for potential like-minded people, I find nothing in my line of site, but I accidentally stumble upon one while trying to send an email about canvas sizing.
I just posed a question to her that might stumble things onto a bad way with her, but I don't get that vibe from her. I don't praise her as the answer to all my questions, because that would be crazy, I've only had a few conversations with her over email and seen what her website has to say, and I'm just not that psychic, but I do find it incredibly interesting. That I've had so much fun talking with her this long has upped my hope for the future with womankind relations and possibly even made me a little less critical......nah....probably not, but I don't see anything wrong with that.
It's probably a bad thing that talking to a like minded woman is a remarkable event, though you could say it is a bad sign on both sides of that fence; negative for womankind or negative for me and my version of being social. eh.

---Sienna of TAO-SA