Forging Connections

As much as I like being alone, I also love meeting new people.  You see, there's a big difference between choosing to be alone and being alone because you have no other choice.  I've realized this more and more during my time here in LA because of how difficult it is to meet people.  I've literally met one person my age in the entire time that I've been here.  I don't mind hanging out with people older than I am.  In fact, I usually enjoy it more than hanging out with people my own age.  But the problem is that a lot of the social things that people do who are just a few years older than I am involve alcohol.  I have absolutely no problem with alcohol, but unfortunately people who work at bars don't care.  It's unlikely that I could even get in to a bar, let alone have a drink at one.  So therein lies the problem I've been having my whole time here in LA.  I'm just not quite old enough to be able to meet and socialize with people who are just a bit older than I am.

I really like connecting with people though!  I love randomly hearing from people I went to high school (which has happened to me three times in the past month- pretty awesome).  It's like re-forging an old connection.  It actually makes me miss high school (something I thought I would probably never do- more on that in a later post).  It's so great.  I've been longing to find a way to meet people that is non-age-discriminant.

AND I FOUND IT!!

I wanted to put a picture of me climbing, but I don't have one yet.
So here's one of the bruises that I get from climbing- so cool.

Climbing is my new favorite thing to do.  I WISH that I had discovered it earlier than I did, but I'm making the most of what I have now.  Seriously though, in two days of climbing, I met four times the number of people I met in the past two MONTHS.  It's a surprisingly social sport.  I say surprisingly because when I used to think of climbing, I thought of it as a partner thing.  But it totally doesn't have to be!  People come all the time to climbing gyms and just boulder (that's something you can do on your own because it doesn't involve a harness and stuff).  And people are super friendly.  They're always wanting to help you improve your skills and chat with you about climbing and everything.  It's so awesome!!  It's really easy to exchange numbers with someone without feeling weird about it because people are always looking for someone to climb with.  I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find a climbing buddy, but now I have like- five!

Not only that, but it's incredibly satisfying.  Nothing works my entire body the way climbing does, and it feels amazing to get my body working that hard and to see what it really can do.

Anyway, I love connecting with people (new and old), but it's a hard thing to do!  I'm really glad that I've found this outlet where I can do it.