The Beginnings of Beautiful Friendships

Ah, Casablanca!  Between you and Blazing Saddles, I am almost always covered for quotes.

Friendships are indeed a beautiful thing.  Along with family, they are integral in making life worth living.  There is both great joy and great pain in them as they ebb and flow.  But they always make you feel alive.

I am often shy, painfully so.  It may take me weeks and months to connect to a new person in my environment.  We have a couple of new people at our work, and I haven't said much to them.  They probably think I don't like them, but it just takes me time to feel comfortable with someone before being more open.  Sometimes I wish was different but I'm not, and at my age I'm not likely to change.

I've been working with the Flying Dragon and their productions and organization for almost two years now.  I have decided to take a short break, and do a play with another local community theater -  WACT (Waycross Area Community Theater).  In the past, over about a dozen years, I had done as many as two dozen productions with this fine group.  I am happy to be back, but what does that mean?  It means that the curtain of shyness may descend again, and by the time it opens back up, the play may be close to being done.

Meanwhile, I see my friends at Flying Dragon moving on with plays of their own, plays I am not involved in.  And I can't help but worry - when I come back to them, will I have to cope with shyness all over again there as well?  Will I fit in again when I come back?  Will the new relationships they form leave me out in the cold, a stranger once more?

All the places I have been before living in Southeast Georgia, including college and five or more years apiece in Cartersville, Stone Mountain and Villa Rica - I know no one now from these places.  And I did have friends.  At least when I was in plays

Thanks to Facebook, I have reconnected with some people from high school.  I am grateful for that.  I have always been better at writing than social contact, so Facebook has been a good way to maintain at least some relationship.

And maybe I am changing a bit.  At tryouts for The Graduate, I was almost immediately comfortable with two people I knew from prior involvement in WACT.  So maybe this old duffer can change a bit.

I head to my new adventure, facing down my shyness fears.  Maybe by the end I will have some friends, maybe one or two of which will endure beyond the play.

And Flying Dragon?  Don't forget me!  I will be back.  Just remember, if I seem a little shy at first, give me time.  It will pass.