Social Cues.

I've been pondering this thought quite a bit over the last 48 or so hours.

We're all these people, trying to get to know and meet other people like ourselves. Find our niche, so to speak.

Many of you know that I fit a few different niches. For most of my life growing up (junior high and high school) I was always a part of the theatre niche. The vast majority of my friends were always with me in my theatre classes and every play.

While that was going on, I had a semi-separate school life where I met some fabulously awesome friends who I'm very close with. We're all smart and had the same upper division classes together throughout all of junior high and the friendship continued in high school.

Then there's my Disney life that wedged in there. I've met some really awesome people.

With each of them I'm a different type of person. I always knew who to be with whom. And I always had somebody to be with.

But then I came so far away from everything that I know, and came into programs that didn't involve 24/7 communication with the same people and no multiple classes with the same like-people.

I freaked.

We all know I've had major trouble making friends and whatever.

Lately I've taken to accepting my being a nerd. Not the dorky, math intelligent, has a gargle laugh, can encode websites nerd. But the "hey, I like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and 80's movies and being intelligent and reading" nerd. And I'm cool with that. The difficult part, however, is we're a dying race. And i've been somewhat secluded to this traditional idea of lonely nerd.

I usually eat at the school cafeteria alone. And as I was doing so the other day, another lonely girl came up to me. This was the kind of nerd that is the math and website nerd. She sat next to me as I was finishing up and tried to talk to me.

Quick as a wink, I was gone.

I'm a walking contradiction. Here is this girl that's obviously in the same kind of boat that I am. Social cues told me to reach out to her and see what we make of it.

I didn't listen.

I realized that while I might consider myself a form of nerd, I'm not this kind. In fact I'm a bit stuck up. Social situations have never put me in these shoes before. And while I was aware that social courtesy intended for me to be one way, I completely disregarded it.

And I still have my other alternative lives at home--theatre, upper division, and Disney.

The purpose of my last book was for my main character to choose one facet of her person that she could be the rest of her life. The three of them blended within her. She could be all of them, one of them, or none of them. Her choice altered the course of her life.

But I'm facing a problem where the facets of my own personality are blending together or fading away.

I have no social cues for where I am now. I don't know who I am now.

Am I one? Or am I many? Should I hang with that traditional nerd in my shoes or make different friends?

All I can do is take a stab in the dark and hope that it's right.

Chelsea