I had the same idea. During the last 3 years, I paid membership fees to use a private, well-equipped gym. My neighbor went there and encouraged me to join her. After paying hundreds of dollars, I didn't go more than a couple of times. Last year, I was getting closer to this neighbor, whom I really admired. I was starting to see her as a friend and a good role model. Talking with her was helping me. Then, around Christmas, she suddenly just died. That was a very disapointing loss, given how seldom I manage to connect with others. She had gotten to know me very well. That had taken years to happen.

With how long it takes me to get to know anyone, I'm just not going to live long enough to build up much of a support network. So I have to make do with what connections I can manage to establish. Two years ago, I withdrew from a twenty year friendship. She was a person whose idea of a friend was someone she could exploit. I put up with it so long because I figured any friend was better than no friend. That's kind of untrue. She used me a lot. Eventually, she just got too out of line. I got to where I had just had enough. Still, I have a sense of great loss over how that went. It would have been better to have set some boundaries and maintained the connection. I shouldn't need to completely exit a relationship to prevent someone taking unfair advantage of me. It went off the rails because I was underskilled, socially, in how to handle a person like her. I learned a big lesson. I would do better with that kind of challenge in the future. I could relate that to other past experiences, where I took flight, rather than stay in an uncomfortable situation and see if I could make it better. Sometimes, you just have to stand your ground. I have sometimes done that. I can look back and see lots of things I handled well. I have had successes in life. Also, I've had a lot of failures. Everyone has wins and losses. You just have to keep doing stuff. Eventually, you rack up more successes that are confidence building. It seems to me that I just haven't ventured forth enough to rack up enough experience in the art of living to get good at it.

What I just figured out, as I'm writing this, is that I have to not have my heart set on success. I have to tackle more opportunities to try things, knowing that there will be failures. I have to decide that having failures is not so awful. Failure is not something to be avoided at all cost, which I tend to do. "He who makes no mistakes does nothing." I spend way too much time doing nothing because I'm afraid of making a mistake. Clearly, that approach to life is not working for me.