I'm back after, wow, five years of silence. I've really missed writing, and I guess I neglected it in favour of posting dance videos on Instagram? IDK.
So we're in the middle of COVID-19 years now, which gloriously means we get to work from home (WFH) and attend courses from home too! I attended a CSC course in early Feb this year, to fulfil a requirement of my learning plan on policy-making or whatever. It was a mornings-only course, over three days, and conducted on Zoom with the request to turn on our video so that the lecturer could assess the class engagement better.
The course was fine - lecturer clearly knows what he's talking about, and I thought the hands-on activities did aid my understanding. He also seems to love talking, and he likes to ask us questions when he thinks we're too quiet. He'd call on people at times, as well. If we had our own questions, we could ask them orally or in the chat. All good, all fine, I could deal with that.
Anyway, on the last day of the course, I was just minding my own business and listening to the content, when I saw a chat pop up, saying something like "You look familiar, are you my neighbour? Blk [redacted] [in neighbouring town]." I was shocked. I thought that the sender had put this in the full chat, but when I calmed down slightly, I realised that he'd messaged me privately. On Zoom. A fellow course attendee, from a different agency, messaged me privately on Zoom.
Okay, no biggie, it's fine. It's an innocent question. Just because I don't know what any of my neighbours look like, aside from the families living next door and across from us, doesn't mean that other people are as unfriendly and unobservant as I am. So I replied him: "Haha no, I'm in [my town]."
And he replied something like, "Oh, wonder why you look familiar."
I don't fucking know, get off my back. I ignored him after that, but it crossed my mind that he might have seen my pole content on IG? Oh well, whatever, he's not the boss of me.
So that was that.
But it wasn't! A couple of days ago, an unknown account messaged me on IG, saying I looked familiar. This private account had 1 post, was following 80ish others, and had 80ish followers itself. It wasn't actually following me, though. From the profile pic, it looked vaguely like this CSC course guy, so I replied, "Haha are you the [agency he's from] guy?" And yes, yes he was.
At first he was just asking normal innocuous things like am I still working from home, etc. He mentioned that my IG posts were cool. Then he went ahead to say "if you don't mind we can continue talking on WhatsApp" and gave me his number.
And it just really bothered me.
A while later, I replied, "Oh but you know I'm married, right?"
And he said, "Oh I'm married too. It's only if you don't mind talking on WhatsApp," or something to that effect.
I'm still disturbed, actually. Why does it bother me? After all, my IG is essentially a pole dancing account, so I get creeps and randos following me etc. Let me try to puzzle out why, or if I'm just being a prude. (Which is quite ironic, considering the type of person I was 10 years ago.)
I don't like "work people" on my socials
When I was working with some regular volunteers, one of them sent me a Facebook friend request. I ignored it. He's a really nice guy who's always polite and respectful, and very generous with his knowledge. But I just didn't want to interact with him on a personal level. Same goes for most of my colleagues, unless we're already friends.
I don't want to be friends with men
Not sure if this has anything to with being married, but I have heterosexual male friends from before I got married, and we don't even chat unless there's something to chat about! Okay, actually I don't have many such friends hahaha. There's Zul and Mizi who were Cutes' friends first. I interact with Zul on IG over his adorable kid, and Cutes and I hang out with Mizi sometimes. There's Suff, whose rising writing career I support sometimes.
Chatting with strangers is so tiring to me. I can't think of why I would chat with anyone, male or female, on the regular, unless we already have something in common. My school friends, my pole friends, my Zumba friends, some friends I met through a crisis work project, etc. These friendships were formed organically after we participated in activities together and found common interests. That's what holds us together, right? I mean, we talk about other topics too, like families and stuff, and we find out things that are different from each other, but then we laugh about those differences, and we bond together even more.
I'm not the most popular person in the world, but I don't feel the need for more friends. My life is full and busy with work, endless classes, and time with Cutes. Even if I did want extra friends, I would make them at the ballet or pole studio. I'm not about to seek someone out from a work-related event and start getting to know them. Please, Cutes and I didn't even stay in touch with the people from our Spanish class!
I guess this turned into I don't want to be forced to be friends. This isn't kindergarten anymore, I can choose who I wish to be friends with.
I think I'm disturbed because this incident implies that this married men in particular is just going around trying to make friends with random women he encounters in his daily life. Just.. giving out his number and wanting to get to know women through texting. Or, ugh, possibly calling. (I hate calling people. It's been this way ever since I was in primary school, when my friends would write their numbers in my autograph books and I would do.. absolutely nothing with that information.) It's skeevy, isn't it skeevy? I would not be happy with my husband if he was doing that. I hope he's not doing that.
Isn't it so achingly painful and awkward to do that dance of "what's your age? what are your hobbies? favourite food? favourite music?" (By the way, most of these questions can be answered by scrolling through my public IG feed.) What is the intended payoff of that? We can visit each others' houses for Raya? Our kids can have playdates? We can go have lunch and talk about.. What? What do we have in common?!
I don't think I'm isteri mithali or anything, but I don't want to chat with any man on the regular, unless it's my husband. He's the only man I find interesting right now. Except for, y'know, dashing celebrities like Jason Momoa and Sonny Bill Williams. So don't try making friends with me. We hit it off at our shared activity, or we don't, and that's the end of it.
