Rainy days mean more of a day watching the world go by. Busy busy can be for other days. And besides sometimes you can do your best pondering on a rainy day. I was doing some of that yesterday. I was debating whether or not to publish this or if it was too scribbly.

Scribbly or not, here it comes.

Yeah, ok, maybe it’s a female thing, but take manners. You don’t expect manners to be perfect, but you do expect people to get the basics. Manners kind of seem optional to some people.

The past few days contained a little bit of people pondering. Not worrying, more like pondering catch and release.

I am a watcher of people. I find human nature and behavior endlessly fascinating. And some days you just need a good think.

The rules in life seemed often more delineated and reliable for lack of a better description years ago versus today. Manners for example.

We see way the world today goes very easily on social media. Sometimes it shows us all what we don’t want to see. But that sometimes is quite useful when framing your own opinions.

You reach a certain point and you feel like some in your life including family can actually reach out to you once in a while to connect and check in. It shouldn’t always have to be you. I have been feeling that a lot recently. If you feel like you are always having to do the connecting and are tired of doing it, simply hit pause. See what happens.

Then there are the chronic we should get togetherers. They call, you chat, they say “we need to get together.” You make plans. You set a date. They evaporate. The next time they surface you laugh because of the last time they evaporated, and then they seem offended. How about you are possibly quietly offended if not merely annoyed and they don’t get it? They don’t get that you put time aside, made plans, and crickets. I have discovered that the easiest solution with these people is to avoid making plans. Or you say great idea let’s check our calendars.

I also saw photos of someone entertaining recently. One of those people whom we have included in things and have entertained. Yet they have never had us to anything or reciprocated. It’s kind of a one-way street and it just makes me wonder. It’s hard to not feel a little used, even if realistically you know it doesn’t matter in the big life picture.

It’s not like I’m going to die for lack of social invitations to do things, but it is the point of the matter. You include them, yet they never reciprocate.

I am thinking that this is when you realize your relationship with some had always been superficial in their world view, so it’s time to simply pull back. Not being mean, life has taught me sometimes that you sometimes invest more in a friendship than is actually there and that is OK. And some people are kind of clueless. And unless you like feeling used, you need to look after yourself and practice a little self-care.

Then there are the people who view most relationships as transactional. If everything is transactional how is it an actual relationship or friendship? And when you are no longer useful, you know because you never hear from them otherwise do you?

Social capital used to go hand in hand with what was society. And the concept of society, and how you got invited places were asked to volunteer had very clearly defined rules. If you had a familial pedigree that was of interest that made it much easier. Otherwise, you earned your spot socially. And like it was with what were once society photos, you were invited in. No pushing, shoving, demanding.

Next we move along to how some move around to gain social capital. It used to be a mingled combination of who introduced you to an organization and working to earn your volunteer chops.

With me, and the whole being social/society of it all, a lot of it had to do with people knowing my parents or friends’ parents at first. Especially when you’re younger. But then, as you earned your own stripes, you were invited to do more. Or not. I was born with a vowel on the end of my name, so I always knew living on the Main Line that not all social doors would ever be open to me and I really wasn’t bothered by that. I left the social striving to others.

Now, within any social structure you did of course have people who would use you for your hard work if you didn’t pay attention. My friends and I had that happen years ago with the then young friends committee for a particular non-profit. This was in the 90s.

We were invited to the orbit of this young friends committee by friends of my parents, actually. I was very excited for this volunteer opportunity at the time because it involved history and historic preservation.

Before we were going to be formally welcomed as members of the then young friends committee, we were asked to help volunteer for a benefit they were having to kind of earn our places (or so we thought.) I think it may have been some sort of a holiday party because it was late in the year. It has been too long.

The event had a silent auction. That is specifically one area where they needed help. They needed silent auction items and they also needed us to bring our friends as paying guests because that is the purpose of being on a committee. You aren’t just doing it so your name shows up on an invitation, you’re doing it because you believe in the organization and you want to help them survive and thrive.

So we helped them sell out the event that year and we got them some of the best silent auction items they had probably seen in at least a couple of years. We got things donated like a full day of golf with food and adult beverages, tickets to a ski resort, and more.

We also lent them the social capital we had build up with our other volunteer opportunities, which sold lots more of their event tickets because this group was rather insular at the time. And we did this gladly. It was a super fun party and they raised money, and we all had fun.

After the party was over, we kept waiting for when this young friends committee would be contacting us to let us know what the next steps were.

Crickets.

Finally, after time had passed, I sent the chair and vice chair a note, thanking them for letting us volunteer with them for the event, and we hoped they were pleased and what were the next steps to joining their group as regular members of the volunteer committee.

What happened next was stunning.

I received an email back from either the chair or vice chair finally in the following new year. Anyway it was this self-impressed little blonde woman with a very constipated and nasty personality. She said that they had changed their by-laws and thanks for helping to make their event a success but they were not interested in any of us any longer.

Only not that nice. And they hadn’t actually changed the bylaws.

I had never experienced that before and neither had my friends. It was terrible feeling that used and discarded. The irony is if they had said their committee had enough bodies but they needed help on that one event with extra volunteers, we probably would’ve have still volunteered. Back then people cross-volunteered.

Recently I heard another volunteer horror story. It involves social blackmail in the hyper sensitive overly politically correct world we live in. Someone who likes to be on committees for what it can get out of them, as opposed to the true spirit of volunteerism. If it was even 15 years ago, people would’ve stood up to this person, and told them to go pound sand. Because truly, that is what should happen. If people are going to play those cards, call their bluff. They only have the power you give them.

I rarely volunteer much anymore where a committee is involved. I know I can no longer keep my mouth shut around certain committee types because it is not fair to the organizations raising money. I just can’t do the fake kiss kiss and vapid small talk with all.

I also can’t stomach the social climbers of today. A lot of them fall into the they want to be influencers category. They live their lives on social media and everything is wonderful/fabulous/amazing /24/7/365. Now if you live in reality, you know that is not possible and really that is who non-profits think will be fabulous for them? So stupid because in the end when organizations cater to the fakely fabulous, they might get short term attention but then what ?

So here I am looking at 60. I don’t know that all the lack of understandable rules and boundaries are really helping anyone and I definitely don’t feel the political correctness BS does any of us any favors. Fakeness and wielding political correctness as a weapon are wrong. And it almost seems as if it is supposed to normalize all sorts of other bad behavior.

Life is short and it is all about learning from our life experiences.

And play catch and release with emotions over people who simply aren’t worth it. Thanks for stopping by.