103. Crazy people, crazy stories - a week of meeting colorful characters
I really thought that I could catch my breath this week. I just need a week where I can think (silently) and write (thoughtfully) and catch my friends up on my lore... Life's been throwing me all sorts of curve balls at me. Super fast ones.
I met an assortment of very interesting people throughout the week. Here are the events that happened and the cast of colorful characters in my life this week. I'm just going to provide the first paragraph of each of the days and publish the rest of the writings as separate posts. I actually broke +5000 words on these alone! I'm very proud!
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Last Weekend
I actually met an American friend from Boston the same night I met my German friend. This guy is a climber, like me, and we got along pretty well. He is a much better and more experienced climber than me. He actually invited me to go to the gym with him the following week. I accepted. Let's go bouldering!
Continued on 105. Weekend trek to a friend's hotel in the boonies
Monday
I am a sucker for trivia. I'm currently in the middle of an online trivia league tournament right now. It's a bit difficult for me because I'm in a different time zone currently, but I'm making it work. (Update: I got 10th place out of 26 people! It was such a rough ride. I ended up missing 3 days in the tournament, but at least I didn't end up being last!)
Continued on 106. Monday trivia victory at the pub
Tuesday
My American friend and I invited the Canadian girl to our bouldering session. It was around five in the evening when we all met up at the climbing gym. I brought my harness and was very excited to go sport climbing.
Continued on 107. Tuesday tore my climbing harness a new one
Wednesday
Around the afternoon, I joined my American friend and my new Danish friend at the same climbing gym. I was a little bit nervous about doing the ninja course, but it went smoothly and we all had a bit of fun. I was so tired running around and climbing on top of things. My upper body ached, but I continued to run around anyway. Three little children that was accompanied by one of the staff was watching the three of us run around the course.
Continued on 108. Wednesday (ninja) warrior wonder and getting my just desserts
Thursday
I like to make friends at the climbing gym. When I went with my "acquaintance" to the gym a couple of weeks ago, I actually made a new friend while climbing! This particular friend was doing some boulders alone, so I watched her try out some routes and gave her a couple of tips on solving the problem. I knew she was a foreigner like me, so we bonded off of that connection. She's from Dijon, like the mustard. We became fast friends that day.
Continued on 109. Thursday thoughtful thoughts and a terrific transportation to France _________________________________________
Friday
I had forgotten that I made some connections on a dating app a couple months ago since I had quickly deleted it. Apparently, I made friends with this girl and she immediately followed me on my Instagram meme account (lol). She wanted to meet up with me for lunch. I accepted.
Continued on 110. Friday found me wined and dined on a friend date
I had a super social week. My social battery is running out!
I actually showed some friends a bit of my blog. I'm unsure whether they continue to read it. It's no biggie. Maybe they can address my written accounts, although all these people are a bit preoccupied with work, travel, their lives, etc. Perhaps the things I write about are a little too harsh? A little too honest? I worry that my words may be hurtful to them and they're going to be like:
For example, my one week ex boyfriend was a little upset about his write-up and had a long discussion with me on the phone about how he was portrayed. Although I got the “go-ahead” to talk about our short romantic speed run on the blog, he just didn’t like the post about him. He told me, "I don't want people to think that I'm that callous!" when I mentioned that part where he said he would lie to his friends about hooking up with me... additionally, he said that I probe him way too much with questions and that I simply could not take a joke.
I’ll share a small piece of our argument:
Over the phone, I told him, “I didn’t really like how you told me that you were hooking up with the waitress while we sat at the restaurant. It seemed a bit uncalled for and certainly not the right time to announce that during breakfast…”
”Come on, I thought it was really funny and wanted to share something funny with you. It made me laugh?”
”Yeah sure… But you said during our week together, you were taking this relationship seriously and that I should lean more into the girlfriend thing. That’s just how I felt at the moment.”
”Yeah, but this is just a quick joke. Why are you being like this?”
”So you only took the relationship seriously when it’s to your benefit, but when I voice discomfort about something, you dismiss it? Romantic relationship or not, I think you should be a bit more considerate when someone tells you they felt uncomfortable about something you said.”
We bickered back and forth. He also said I was overly sensitive and a perpetual overthinker. These characteristics may be true, but I feel like they’re not flaws or aren't bothersome to me. I think we resolved this issue by saying that we agree to disagree... He apologized profusely a couple more times and the conversation left off on a good note. He realized a couple of things about himself and apologized some more.
These days,I don’t really talk to him that much… I’m not sure if he reads my blog at this point (lol).
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I had some complaints about how I've written people, whereas the German guy told me he was moved to tears when he read his story. He said enjoyed it and that he even shared the post to his friends while he was traveling in India. He even talked about my blog to another traveller when he was in Thailand. His travel companion had a blog as well, and I thought it was cool.
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I don't know... to write or not to write? I feel a bit conflicted because I want to share my life, but not make anyone feel terrible by providing too much detail or scrutiny into their conversations or interaction with me. I feel like the written accounts are very true to how things really played out. I'm just a bit worried that my perspective will sometimes hurt the people. My intention isn't to hurt people about what I've written about them, but just to give a true account of how I view them. I think they're all cool. I don’t hate anyone at all (well, except that one guy that thought we were dating…)
Nonetheless, crazy people, crazy stories.
~ a crazy person with many crazy stories,
<3 K