Fair Weather Friends

Egos get in the way in life quite often and it's really sad... In designing, there has to be some ego involved, but there is a point where it goes a bit too far. I took a beady class a long time ago from a pair of instructors who talked about a beady group they were part of. They got together once a week and beaded. Sharing ideas and information. I dream of having that one day, but every time I try to achieve that, the egos keep getting in the way. I get tired of it, so tired that I occasionally think I am wasting my time making beady buddies. It often comes to bite me in the ass. I want to have beady friends who are willing to share what they know as well as learn what I have to share. Instead, I often find people who have things but won't share them, however they want all I have to share with them.

Case in point this week, I had an acquaintance (My SO's term for this someone who was probably never my true friend in the first place) that had posted inaccurate information on a bead related subject to her blog. I have a real problem with this because there is enough wrong info out there, when it's something I can give facts about on, I try to get the facts out there. No matter how much factual information I handed to her, she kept pushing her opinion, which was NOT supported by the facts from one of the parties involved. Another party in the same beady circle asked me about the situation on IM. I gave my side of what happened. I am afraid that my comments may have been passed along... to the one who isn't mature enough to say something to me personally. It was also alluded to that I moderated the person in question on my bead list. True - she was moderated but the WHOLE list gets moderated when the topic can be volatile. It was not a personal affront: 98% of that list is moderated and it states as much on the front page of the list. I am guessing that due to this, she left all of my e-mail lists, since another party in that same group mentioned it. This is apparently supposed to wound me. Whatever!

It's not about being right - it's about being accurate. I didn't tell the woman I'm right and you are wrong - I told her - this is what the company involved said were the facts. It was the request of the owner of that company that I send her the information. She had closed the blog to further comment and he couldn't correct the facts there and he since didn’t seem to know who she was, he asked me to please make sure she got his information. One person said it was a disagreement and it was not. I didn’t disagree with her; I fed her information, which she refused to use. She then deleted her ENTIRE BLOG. How mature! It's "I can't post a simple correction to keep the blog accurate" - "I can't be wrong, so I won't have a blog at all!" Then she didn't RSVP for the bead meeting we have once a week, but I can’t read much into that because she didn't always RSVP in before all of this happened and seldom showed up at all.

A close non-beady friend pointed out to me that she just might have gotten all she wanted to get from me, that I am no longer of any use to her, so she just did things in the last couple weeks to create a space between us which will just get bigger and bigger and finally become a gap too big to bridge. After sleeping on it, I think my very intuitive friend was right. This person didn't always share the projects she had that I was interested in, however, I did share a couple of my personal favorites with her. On hindsight, I can see that now but I was naive enough to think she would eventually be forthcoming. It's sad but as my SO said - IF she was really my friend, she could take being given correct information and moved forward in this relationship. Maybe it was never a real friendship after all... It was only an acquaintance and it makes me sad that I so believed it to the more than that.

That said, I do have the blessing of a few beady friends, though most of them don't live close to me, who share freely with me. They are the ones I can bounce beady ideas off of. I can send my directions to and they will tell me where I screwed them up! I can vent my feelings to them and not get judged. They are the people I count in my blessings every day. Without them I would probably not be the beader I am today. They encourage me, set me straight, and smack me around when I need it. They are far from being fair weather friends. They are my friends when we agree and disagree. I guess I should focus on them and stop sweating the small shit huh?