hell yeah friends

Again, my thoughts circle back to the hell yeah life.

I have made a lot of fans over the course of my life for lots of reasons:

• willingness to help
• intelligence/knowledge on a subject
• physical appearance (it's a shock, but some people think i'm a good-looking guy)
• curiosity
• boredom

Up until now, I've been mostly okay with that. Sometimes, things change their course and deeper friendships/relationships emerge from what started as very shallow nonsense and I still believe that can happen as I meet people.

These people are acquaintances. "Fans" if you will. "Oh yay, he's here. He's cool..." and so on, but then there's friends. People that you can connect with on varying emotional, spiritual and physical levels. People that you can tell the most vapid of nonsense and then turn and tell them the darkest of your secrets and it all seems like one flowing conversation. People I can laugh with and cry with. People who see the talents you have as useful, but not essential to maintaining their relationship to and with you.

That last sentence makes a whole world of difference because without that as a point, sometimes the difference between fans and friends is indistinguishable. Everyone I meet starts out as a fan. There's a something they like and as long as I keep doing that thing, they will continue to like me. That's just how people are and that's fine, but in order to move into the territory of friendship -- true friendship -- I would think that someone would need to move away from "I like them because they do..." to "I like them because they are...." In rare cases, it can evolve to, "I like them. Period."

Today, I was talking to a person that found me attractive. Like I said, it happens. It seems they were only after one thing and as per my usual, I was like "Not so much..." They just ended the convo after that. It was just pitiful, but I'm thankful for that moment, because it just reinforces this very idea.

I need more "Hell Yeah!" people in my life. I need more friends and fewer fans and I need to be a bit more... merciless in how I categorize the two. I don't hate you for being a fan, but I'm over it. Let me gather my friends and move on; the fans can admire from a distance.