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? 🙁