Searching for community

Graham has been watching a lot of Sesame Street lately on the iPad, so I frequently here the "Word on the Street" part of the show.  One of the recent words is jealous.  Jealous is wanting what someone else has.  I'm jealous of my friends who actually get to do things with each other.  I'm jealous that they have a community of people in their lives who are willing to make the effort to be present in each others' lives.  I wish I had that.  I wish I had people to do fun things with on the weekends.  I wish that Graham and I would be invited over to make craft projects.  I wish that I had some girlfriends who I could occasionally meet for dinner, even on a weeknight. I wish I had a running group to get my butt in gear on these cold mornings.

I'm working on being grateful for the good things I have in my life, but I can't help but feel a little sad that in 8.5 years at Kalamazoo, the majority of my work friends have never seen my house.  I tried in those first few years to have people over but it never quite worked out.  So I stopped trying.  Conversely, I don't get invited to do things because I feel like for a while I had legitimate conflicts, so people stopped inviting me (although frankly, the invites were few and far between to start with).  I'm jealous that the people I know in GR have such amazing communities that there isn't room for anyone else.  I'm sad that when Jeff's friends invite us out, only he can go because it inevitably conflicts with Graham's nap and well, one of us has to stay home.

I'm jealous because Jeff is going to a basketball game on Saturday and while I'm happy I will get to spend the day with Graham, I'm sad that I'll be spending another weekend wishing that I was doing something fun with a friend, too.  Although I'm sure my mom will come over, but that's mostly because she's an adult unsure of how to make friends, too. 

I'm in search of a community and I'm not sure where to find it.

Also, I need to start posting things that are more positive.