I met with my mentee in the high school mentoring program I participate in tonight. I felt bad because I haven’t been able to make a single session for the last four months because I’ve been out of town every single time a meeting got scheduled. I’d always apologize in my emails to my mentee, and in each email that approached the next session, she’d always say that she hoped to see me then and that she missed me. It always made me feel like a negligent mentor.

So, I finally see her after not seeing her since last May, and what has happened to her since then? Not only has she curled her eyelashes and put on eye shadow and lipstick, but she’s even curling her hair now and trying to wear heels! She’s still growing into her body and is very awkward when she moves. I’m sure that was like me when I tried to wear heels and stand up tall when I was around her age. I told her she looked really cute with her hair, and she gave me a disgusted look and said it looked terrible and that she messed it up several times that morning.

She says she’s been an hour and a half late to school for her mentoring class each Tuesday because of the train and bus, but I wonder if it’s because she’s spending extra time doing her hair and makeup in the morning. These are the issues of teen girls across the country, if not the world, regardless of socioeconomic background or English language proficiency.

My birthday is coming up in a week, and so for the first time in four years, I’m actually organizing a birthday dinner for myself… at my favorite Indian Chinese restaurant in Queens. I’m even thinking about ordering a cake to have cut at the restaurant.

I remember the last time I did this, and the dinner ended up not being that enjoyable. The drinks event afterwards could possibly have been worse from my memory. But this year, I actually have high hopes for it. Maybe it’s just because I may be more confident now, and I really don’t care if the people who come get along or not. Or maybe I am more confident in the people in this crowd because I actually like all of them individually. Back in 2012 when I think about it more, I realized that I invited a lot of people not really because I liked them, but thought that they’d be offended if they weren’t invited, or just because of association with one of my other friends. That’s never a good reason to invite someone to anything, right?

I’ve honestly never worked at a workplace where it’s seemed that no one really cares, other than say my boss and a few colleagues that work directly with me every day. The truth is that I’ve cared less and less about it as time has gone on, so now, I am desensitized to it. I don’t bother saying anything more than “good morning” to the colleagues who sit around me during the day, and then “good night” at the end of the night. A few people will say “welcome back!” from my trip and being away, but no one will ask anything deeper than that except for the people I previously mentioned.

I told this to one of my friends, and she told me that she had a really great relationship with her teams to the point that they even go out for things like movies and trivia nights through the week and weekends. She said she’d be sad if she didn’t have this culture. I suppose that after a while of dealing with what I do at my own work, I’ve just become desensitized to it that I really don’t care anymore and accept it for what it is while I still choose to be here. Let’s be realistic: I don’t really come to work to work with people directly on my team. We all have our own sub teams that we work with, and clients externally that we service. We could literally all just work remotely from home every single day, and it wouldn’t have any major effect on any of us and our relationship (or lack thereof) with each other. There are advantages and disadvantages of having jobs like this where the actual touch point you have with the people at your own company is low, but at least the benefit for me now is that it’s very flexible, and I don’t need to be at the office every single day and pretend I have a relationship with people I don’t really care about.

January is the month of hibernation, according to Chris. Each January in the last five years, he’s been anti-social and refuses to leave the apartment unless it’s for work, theater, or really warm food. We came from Australia, where the weather was slightly humid and in the 80s and 90s Fahrenheit. Then, we moved on to Hong Kong, where the temperatures were quite steady at a mild low- to mid-60s our entire time there. It felt almost like San Francisco. And as we exited our plane coming from LAX to JFK this evening, a very cold gust of wind that was about 20 degrees F hit both of us, including my socks-less feet. We were home.

We went through the usual things we do when we get back after almost a month of not being here: unpack, open up our endless mail, which usually includes Christmas cards (labeled “Happy Holidays” from PC friends and family in California to “Merry Christmas” from friends who aren’t as PC) and random packaged gifts, and cleaning up accumulated dust that has appeared on top of the toilet and the sink in the bathroom. And as I went through all these things, I realized that this January would be a little different from all the previous ones because this time around, I would have a long list of wedding-related tasks to get done — a very, very long one.

Why didn’t I just hire someone else to do this all for me? 🙁

I’m a good friend. After a night of partying at my company’s holiday party, I agreed to dragging Chris and myself out to Brooklyn to drink and catch up with my good friend and her boyfriend, who earlier this week had shoulder surgery and wanted to be close to his apartment for convenience. I told myself that I’d have two drinks to catch up with them and leave, but somehow that ended up being something more like five drinks plus two shots. And we didn’t get home until past 4am. This morning, I woke up and could barely speak. My voice was gone.

Then, the rest of today felt unproductive, as I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish our last weekend in New York before leaving for Melbourne for Christmas, and pretty much nothing got done. Two nights in a row of heavy drinking ruins all productivity. Once upon a time, I could have gotten through this, and now almost at 30, I cannot. I’m so exhausted.

Today, we went to my semi new friend’s birthday brunch, where we learned that she is four months pregnant with her second child, which will be a girl. At the brunch were a number of new parents with babies who were anywhere from two years to three- or four-months old. This was an adult brunch, so the babies were left at home with either their other parents or grandparents.

As I am about to enter my thirties, I realize that friends I inevitably will end up making will be pregnant, have children, and already be well past the stage of being single, or engaged and getting married and planning weddings. We sat at brunch and listened to three different parents discussing their lack of sleep, parenting and babies how-to books and the techniques they were learning. I tried to follow along and show interest, but the more I listened, the more ill I felt. Is this really my future — having babies and discussing over two hours the ins and outs of experimenting on different “get your baby to sleep quickly” methods? I sympathize with their lack of sleep and desire to seek advice and tips from the others. I think every parent needs some sort of official or unofficial support group to get through parenthood, especially when the babies are so young that they can’t communicate their feelings with you.

The funny and fitting thing was that when we came home, Chris turned on Everybody Loves Raymond, and the episode was when Debra and Raymond go out to celebrate an anniversary, and they realize they have absolutely nothing to talk about other than their kids. That’s really one of my absolute nightmares, that I will turn into one of those parents who can only talk about her kids. I even hear new parents say that and catch themselves blabbering on and on about their own kids. I admire even more parents who have young children and are able to keep an active social life and career and have opinions and activities outside of parenting and children. It’s literally a very, very full calendar for them.