It’s easy to make friends in Korea. No really, it
is. Living in Korea has this wonderful ability to meet many other people young
and old, foreigner and Korean all over the country. I’ve only been here six
months and in that short amount of time, I feel like I’ve been able to meet a
large variety of people from all walks of life and all different backgrounds.
Whether I talked to them for only a few moments or a few months, being able to
meet new people has been an incredible experience.
As much as I enjoy meeting new people, and new faces
I don’t always like social interaction. Sound strange? In many ways it is.
Enjoying the company of people and then again… not, it’s quite the hedgehog’s dilemma
of having people become close to you, only to push them away.
It’s a problem that I have always been aware of but
always secretly figured would leave or die out as I grew older, that I would
one day have a greater appreciation of people and their presence and be willing
to spend more time around them. This has become true to some extent, as mentioned
above I do love meeting up and spending time with people, but one thing I do
enjoy even more is my private time.
After a day work, the one thing I enjoy the most is
being alone. As weird and as brooding as that sounds believe me when I say it’s
most certainly not. It’s not an attempt to be a longer or separate from
society, but rather a time for reflection and a way to recharge after the day.
In a typical day there is a lot that goes through my
mind that I either want to sort out or try and forget about before having to
repeat the process the next day. Sometimes I have extra work to do after my
normal job, requiring me to spend the time and energy usually reserved for
resting and reflecting on another task. As lazy as it sounds, sometimes a day
teaching in an all boy high school can leave you physically and mentally
exhausted. There are usually two things that sound appealing to me at the end
of a work day. Those things are dinner and sleep.
I have gone out on the weekdays before whether it
was for a planned gathering or meeting. I had no problems doing this, I enjoyed
it greatly, remember the liking people thing I mentioned before? Still the same
here. However the times that I would
actually do this were sparingly, each time being an event and not a daily occurrence.
It’s like eating candy. If you eat that candy bar every once in awhile it’s a sweet
and delicious treat. If you eat it every day, it’s probably still sweet and
probably still delicious but much less so than before. It’s no longer a little present to yourself,
it’s now just a candy bar.
I have no problem against people who go out on the
weekdays and have an extravagant and party-filled time. If they can manage to
muster that much energy and still be in tip-top condition for the next day
workload, they have my respect. I’ve come to discover that I am not one of
those people and have finally come to accept it. I love being with people, I
love being social, I just can’t do it every day. The weekend is a different
story, free of weekly pressures and deadlines, I feel truly free and willing to
do all kinds of interacting within a two day period. The weekdays for me
however are best spent recharging and doing the best I can at what I get paid
to do.
Maybe one day this will leave me and I’ll turn into
the budding socialite that I always aspired to be* but for now I’ll leave the
good times for an occasional taste during the week and a huge meal during the
weekend. I may be socially lazy compared to some, but I really don’t mind. As
long as the ones who matter most don’t mind either, it seems like I’ll be ok.
Which reminds me, I think I have to meet someone
tonight…
 |
| Or I'll end up like this guy. YOLO! |
*I secretly hope this doesn’t happen otherwise I’ll
be that 40 year old dude dancing in the club and creeping out all happening
youngsters.
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