Dang All These Nice People!

I’ve always been pretty good at compartmentalizing my life. I separate work and family. I don’t like to socialize with co-workers outside of work functions. I’m friendly with my neighbors, but don’t go on vacations with them, etc.


I’m not sure why I’m this way. Whether it’s because I’m extraordinarily bad at separating emotions from business decisions, focusing on work if I’m worried about someone, or something else entirely, I’ve just never been one to intermingle the different aspects of my life.

I’m not even exactly sure when this started. In high school, I played Volleyball and loved it. Obviously, there was camaraderie with the team and I loved them like sisters. But my best friends had nothing to do with Volleyball. I spent more time with my teammates than anyone. I was even in two of their weddings. But the friends I was most emotionally wrapped in were not on the team. I never even had a party where I invited both my teammates and my other school friends. They were always separate.

In the Air Force, separating work from my social life was hard. Living overseas and several deployments really limited my opportunities to make friends that weren’t also in the AF. And being a Civil Engineer, I, at some point or another in my career, worked with just about everyone. I tended to get past this by forming close relationships with people outside of my squadron. People I had other things in common with, such as church, or hiking groups, or anything besides me having to see them at work all the time. But, regardless, I worked with some pretty great people at times. And I couldn’t help but genuinely like some of them. Still, if I got into a situation where I was too close, or where too much intimacy formed, I would get uncomfortable and shut down. I maintained a cool distance from most of them. I would rather my coworkers believe that I wasn’t all that friendly, than violate my own need (no matter how selfish) to not be too close to any of them. To this day, I’m happy with the decisions I made. My job was often hard and there’s no way I could have enjoyed what I was doing, or fully focused on it, if I had to also maintain close friendships.

As a civilian, things continue to get murkier for me. I have several friends in completely different career fields. I live in a pretty populated place with plenty of opportunities to put everyone I know if the neat little boxes I create for them. The problem is that people are just way too nice. What starts out as, what I feel, is someone forcing their friendship on me, turns into me having real feelings and really caring for them. I know I’m sounding pretty cold right now, but I’ve never had a problem, before now, just saying I have work friends and I have real friends. The two shall never meet!

Especially now, all someone has to do is ask me about Kaelyn and I’m sucked right in. I love talking about her! And it’s the quickest way for me to forget all my personal “rules” and just dive right in to a detailed conversation about things that have nothing to do with work. I don’t have many friends with kids…at least young kids. So, when someone at work offers me that connection, I jump right in. Then I realize something I was hoping I’d never have to. These are great people, who have a lot to offer a friendship. Now, it’s too late. I have more than just “work friends”, I have “friends at work.” It goes against everything I’ve ever believed in. But, there’s nothing I can do about it.



I like them all to darned much!!