After attending a ladies' luncheon, I can say with certainty that I am not now nor will I ever be a lady who lunches.  At least not in the way that I use that term.  My companions were great.  They were pleasant, welcoming, friendly and fun to chat with, but do you ever find yourself in a situation where you are thinking, "One of these things is not like the others?"  It was me, and I did it to myself.  It had nothing to do with age or economic background.  We ranged in age from 25 to 70.  One person had not had a steady job in two years, another was just starting a career and one was getting ready to retire after a career spent in consulting.  Social, networking lunches are so different from working lunches.  I'm really good at working lunches.  I'm not so good at polite chit-chat which can lead to making connections.  I need to work on that.  I'm entering a new phase in my working life, I'm starting a business, and meeting women  like these and forming connections could all be essential to my future success.  I need to look at networking opportunities just like they are part of my job because they are.  Every cup of tea has to be treated like a working lunch.

I've analyzed and over-analyzed why I was so uncomfortable in this situation: I just couldn't relax.  After years of working on not caring about what people think of me, I sat there for two hours worried about what they were thinking.  In situations like this, where I don't know anyone and it's a new environment, it's so easy for me to slip back into that negative, self-doubt mindset.  I need to just be me.  Just me doesn't really like tea that much even though I spent last week drinking a ton of it while I had a sinus infection (my favorite right now is Good Earth but I think I'm ready to go back to Republic of Tea's Ginger Peach which used to be the only tea I drank when I was sick until I got, well, sick of it).  I will always choose coffee first and always in a huge mug (I love my new, huge Nightmare Before Christmas mug which was a gift from my husband) because that is just me.

Linked to Visible Monday