Life: Am I lonely? Are my friends really friends?

The trigger for this post was caused by a fleeting feeling of sadness when I realized that very, very few "friends" call me to chat or catchup. And by friends calling me, I mean that they call me maybe once a year sometimes even two years.

Even then, the ratio of me calling them versus they calling me is extremely high. Actually as I write this and except for my family, no one calls me more often and not even close to 50/50.

The sad part is not whether they think of me as a friend or not. I feel more sadness thinking that I am kind of a waste of their time. Should I just stop reaching out? Maybe it is their way of saying not interested?

Does this make me lonely? I am not sure. Maybe it isn't really a feeling of sadness but maybe more like a disappointment that I couldn't be of more value to other people. I also kind of starting to sense that maybe they only talk to me out of pity. Pity of what though?

Or is it this lack of sadness that makes it hard for me to relate to people's need to have friendships that is more regular like on a daily or weekly basis? Even with whom I call my good/best friends, I chat with them maybe on a yearly basis.

Or is it normal to have to put in so much effort to maintain friendships? It doesn't seem like it should to me.

Am I lonely? I do not feel sad about being alone. But this is easy for me to say because I have a loving family although could be a insane sometimes. I sense that I could survive being alone. I could find contentment and occasional happiness. Would I get depressed? Probably not.

Are my friends, friends? Yea, I believe my good friends are. I think I just attract others who are more similar to me, maybe even more of a hermit than me. I fully believe that if I am in need that they will try to be there for me. And if they are ever in need, that I would try to be there for them. By "try", I mean with the best of intentions. I would not expect them to put me over their family nor to put them in any financial risks.

I believe I have less traditionally defined friends. And I am ok with that.

I also believe I have some friends that I would really love to be better friends with that I am not sure if it is reciprocated. Which I am ok with too, but just unsure if I should just not contact them anymore. Or is this deemed more like an investment/insurance in case they would need me? My feelings are a bit complicated on this on whether I should just use that time on finding other people.

Or is my feelings complicated because I seem to spend more time with colleagues than people I really care for? I actually spend more time on this blog than most people too...

But in some sense this blog is kind of my way to communicate without being a burden. Only people who would be very interested would find this. I guess the other is that is mostly for my future self. Or is it for hopes that it could help a completely random person? I don't know... 

Re-reading this blog made me think of the Twitch psychologist, Alok Kanojia. I don't think I am even on that level. I can understand from empirical information. But I have to admit that it is very difficult for me to relate empathetically to the more extreme (imo) feelings. Makes me wonder if that is what differentiates the types of friends we have. In that case, I guess it makes sense that I "keep" a smaller circle. But it is not that I am the one limiting my circle size. Or maybe I am because there are definitely some people I did not want to be close friends with.

Work Life: If you need help, pause to listen (also works for normal life)

A close person had asked what sorts of food to make and was clearly asking me for assistance. 

"What food should I make?"

"There isn't much ingredients."

"It is hard to decide."

"Give me a list of things I can make."

And on and on and on...

I even made some attempts to provide some feedback. I tried using handle signal for a pause or a few seconds. Eventually even trying to interrupt. But she just kept on going for 30+ minutes, even repeating questions/statements.

She is definitely not the first person that I interacted with like that. Even at work there are people who just keep on asking, repeating the same question, talking a mile-a-minute, etc. These people at least you can kind of ignore or build a method to get out.

The worst are people who have an open Q&A to a presentation. They use half the time to present, then uses the second half asking for questions, to be open about questions, etc. There would be people with raised hands or try to get attention, but the presenter just keeps on going.

My Advice

1. Be comfortable with very uncomfortable silence

2. Pauses in your speech. 

Why?

1. Some people do not interrupt out of respect. It is more polite to hear the whole thing before responding.

2. Who's helping who? If you are asking for help, it is not my problem that you run out of time.

3. Respect runs both ways. If you do not respect my time, then I am less likely to interrupt you to help you.

(Bonus Skill) Learn to Empathize and Summarize

I understand that most people are unable to understand this so I will give a pass to some people (but know that I will still be irritated inside).

Empathy is your ability to put yourself in someone else's situation and have an interest to help. You do not need to fully understand especially the emotional part. In this case of seeking help, you need to understand who your audience is. Do they know your situation? Do they know the details? Do they know enough to help solve your problem? The counter-balance to this is to also know when too much information is too much information. The easiest is to listen if they have questions. Part of this is also to understand the person is also trying to come up with a solution within a limited period of time that you have spent significantly more time on.

I have no answer how to practice empathy. One of the common tests to see if someone has empathy is by just listening tell you their day. People with low empathy will commonly just jump from story to story with no context. No identifiers to understand that "he" in story 1 is different from "he" in story 2. And when it becomes clearer that story 2 is in place and I speak up, the speaker actually gets more irritated, frustrated, and/or angry.

Maybe I am not a great listener, but an empathetic person should change their speech patterns to their audience. That is essentially what empathy is. I have had little luck in explaining empathy to less-empathetic people. When I explain empathy to highly-empathetic people, I am not really explaining empathy. I am mostly teaching them other points-of-views that they haven't considered, then they go to town with it.

But on the most basic level, if you are asking someone to solve a problem... they need to have all the ingredients to solve the problem. If you lack an ingredient, then they will either say it is unsolvable or they will assume certain values or defaults (whether it is correct or not because maybe it may still help).

On the other hand, do not overwhelm them with information. So learn to summarize. Give as much ingredients as possible that is needed but not too much more than needed.

All this is just to get information from a person one time with little past negative history. To get continued help is another level of empathy. How is this experience going to help or detract some from help you in the future? Some people may help you this time but if the experience is poor, will they help in the future. In summary, empathy is not just a moment but also multi-level. Fortunately if you are starting to understand empathy, some empathetic people will understand and give some leeway. This is probably one of the few things that I believe hard-work and time will help anyone's quest to be more empathetic.

Buggish: Sharing folder breaks IIS

I do not understand why sharing an IIS directory breaks IIS. The worst part is that I cannot undo this. I cannot unshare the directory and have IIS work again. And when I compare to other IIS directories, the permissions look exactly the same.

There are several resources on how to resolve this which typically boils down to adding IUSR or IIS_USERS to the directory. But what I am interested in is how do I return back to before? How did IIS work before sharing? I can understand that sharing the folder changes the permissions, but what did it change?

I check to make sure all the users are the same under the security tab under the folder properties. Is there another way to apply permissions to a folder? There must be, right? Otherwise, I should see a difference.

I also checked the web.config file which is the main reason that IIS breaks because it no longer has access to read that file. It makes little sense that this would be it because I can always create a new web.config file which happens often with developers because they want to backup the original then drop in the new file.

I also checked IIS Manager, but nothing seems to make sense there. Authentication is using Anonymous Authentication and Application Pools uses IUSR. Oddly, adding IUSR does not fix my problem. I had to add IIS_USERS to fix the problem. Why? I have no clue.

Buggish: Unable to access MS Network Folder (after deleting with net use)

 This is incomplete blog, but wanted to add note for future reference:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24933661/multiple-connections-to-a-server-or-shared-resource-by-the-same-user-using-more

C:\> net stop workstation /y

C:\> net start workstation

Reference

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/05/buggish-unable-to-access-ms-network.html