Today is my flatmates 30th birthday and she just had a party. Attendance was pretty much mandatory and it actually worked out pretty well thanks to the company I went with. All in all it wasn’t bad for a party. It was pretty close to home so I walked back afterwards. While I was walking I was thinking about how I actually hated parties and regardless of how much I enjoyed them, by the end I always felt out of place. I was thinking about how tonight fit into it and I was going to blog about how at the end of the night I was sitting with a group of people who have been working where I work for much longer than I have. And they were talking in that code which old friends use and I was sitting there looking in. I was thinking about how I would post about that and what I thought when I realised something. Its absolutely nothing earth shattering and it was something I’ve touched on before but tonight it just clicked.
I have no friends that are the same age as me. Indeed we could pretty much stretch that out into the same age group as me. It doesn’t bother me, I’ve always had friends who were older than me and one in particular who is younger than me. But I’ve always been around people who are the same age, be it school, college, working behind the bar or working in the call centre. Working in London, it is just not the same. There are a couple of exceptions, one of the guys on the floor and indeed one of my closer friends in London is only a year older than me, but it just never seems that way for reasons I’m not going to get into. Also for other reasons I’m not going to get into, there is another but it never feels like it either.
I guess I can sum this up my saying I don’t feel like I have any peers. In terms of my job sure I have peers, but that is a whole other situation. I guess I feel out of place, no guessing about it actually at times and more times than I would like I feel out of place. It is nothing at all to do with anyone around me so please don’t take it as that, its just me. It’s the feeling of missing something I guess. I don’t have a group of friends of my age who don’t have responsibilities who can just go out and do what they want and I’m not part of the “well we are older now and have responsibilities so can’t come out but come around for dinner next week” group. It is not like there is even a middle ground, there is just me out there on my on own. I think that sums it up actaully. I don’t know if I have anything else to say.
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Interesting reading, check this out: Why do our Iraq battle plans keep showing up in the New York Times?
