What did I do wrong?
It’s amazing how emotionally invested you can get in an on-line community like DearDiary. I’ve been a bit slack lately about keeping up with reading diaries, so this morning I decided to catch up with some of them. I was clicking through the notify emails and came to one from someone whose diary is friends only, so I logged in, but instead of being taken to their diary got the “you are sucessfully logged in but you do not have permission to view this diary” page. I checked my friends list, and sure enough, I’ve been “de-friended” by this person.
It’s weird, I’ve never met this person, and in “real life” wouldn’t know them if I tripped over them, but seeing that felt like a kick to the stomach. I really did feel like I would if a real-life friend suddenly stopped talking to me and started snubbing me in the street. Although I know people have all sorts of reasons for cleaning up their friends lists, and that many (if not most) of those reasons have nothing to do with the people being de-friended, my first thought was still that it must be my fault: “What did I do? Did I do something to annoy them? Did I leave a comment that was taken badly? Did I write something I shouldn’t have? Did I comment too much? Or not enough?”
It’s probably a sign that I’m a really insecure person or something, and nobody else has this reaction to being de-friended, but I’m still going to be a lot more careful about how I go about cleaning up my friends list myself in future!
On to more cheerful things. I’ve had a pretty constructive week off this week, getting all sorts of little jobs done (taking advantage of being able to go into town during the week when things like banks and post offices are actually open), plus a few bigger ones.
The main job was I finally managed to finish putting together our bid for the 2009 Bookcrossing Convention, and sent it off to bookczuk and Sonora. With some help from lytteltonwitch, and contributions of photos from various people from the BCNZ group, I put together a seriously multi-media powerpoint show with photos and video and music, which of course I went totally over the top with so it ended up being such a huge file that I think it broke a few people’s emails when I sent it (sorry about that!). It looks really cool though, especially because when I added the music (a clip from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack – seemed appropriate for advertising NZ :-)), even though I hadn’t worked it out to do so at all (I just bunged the music on at the last minute because watching silent slides seemed boring), it fitted the timings I’d given the slideshow perfectly, with some seriously serendipitous moments (some of the most beautiful parts of the music coincide with the photos of NZ scenery, and the theme that represents the fellowship comes in just as the slide labelled “Our Team” comes up!). Skyring has agreed to do the actual presentation for us (because the bid has to be presented at this year’s convention in Charleston, and none of us could get there), and I’m sure will do a fantastic job selling the wonders of NZ – he’s always been so enthusiastic about the country on his visits here. No idea whether we’ve got a chance of winning the bid, but it’s been fun putting it together anyway 🙂
I also finally went and did some clothes shopping! I hate shopping for clothes, so tend to avoid it for as long as possible, but the days are getting colder, and when I looked at last winter’s clothes they were looking pretty worn out, so some shopping was inevitable. So I bit the bullet and went to Riccarton on Thursday, and amazingly had total shopping success. In the first shop I went into, I walked up to a rack of trousers, saw a pair that I actually liked, and not only did they have some in my size, but when I tried them on they fitted perfectly! (They do need to have the hems taken up a little bit, but that’s normal for me) Then I looked at some tops and the same thing happened again – I saw something I liked, they had two in my size in colours I liked, and they looked good when I tried them on! So I’ve now got a couple of new outfits for work, which combined with the things from last year that aren’t totally falling apart should keep me going for the whole winter. Why isn’t clothes shopping always that easy?
Of course, I released a few books in between shopping and running errands: The Pimpernel Project by Mary Raymond, Michael, Michael by Wendy Perriman, The Love Songs of Phoenix Bay by Nisa Donnelly, and The Angelic Game by Lawrence Osborne.
Mostly though my week off has just been spent relaxing and doing as little as possible. Which is what time off is supposed to be about 🙂