Thanks, Perna. Glad it's more common than I thought! I like your dark hallway example.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
If you want friends, you have to pay attention to them/people around you and make the effort to enter into conversations, etc.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> I know, and sometimes I do manage - I've made a few great friends since starting university, it's the first time I've felt accepted in a group for a while. But with some other groups (like the people I go round with at orchestra), whether rationally or not, I don't feel welcome - it doesn't help that they're all music students in the same class, so I don't have much in common with them - so I don't talk much, and retreat into my own thoughts, to avoid bothering them. I think I'm too quick to "give up" on people.

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One can't "stand still" one is always moving forward or backwards; that's why it's is best to work hard especially when depressed or having a hard time of any sort to keep trying because otherwise the "speed" at which one falls backwards will increase and the further "back" you are the harder it is to get moving forward again and make up the "distance." Think about subjects you have trouble with in school and when that started and how you have behaved since you started having trouble?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> Good point!

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I spent 10-20 years in my head in the 1960's and 70's and didn't learn a darn thing "new"/helpful other than that was a bad idea :-)

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> Well, that's still helpful. Thanks again!