Last week I made plans to go out of town for the weekend by myself. I am a total introvert and work at a full-time demanding job with lots of interaction with clients and coworkers. I'm also a busy mom and wife. So I occasionally need to make time for myself to go somewhere, shut the door for a couple days and experience my own thoughts. I made plans initially to drive there with a couple girlfriends... the plan was to drop me off and go our separate ways. It turned out the shared ride thing didn't work out which worked better for me anyway so I could have the freedom of my own car. But while I was planning all this a coworker overheard me making my plans at work and she said "oh, you're having a girls weekend!! I've never known you to do that ever! How great!" She seemed so happy to think that was what I was doing, I let her keep thinking that. It made me feel a little socially-inept that what I was doing was actually going away to be a loner... I felt a little odd to be doing that...and because while I don't lack for friends men and women, I don't have a big posse of girlfriends to hang with for the weekend. The idea of a "girls weekend" is actually very unappealing to me, whereas a weekend to myself feels like total luxury. I think it's partly unappealing to me (aside from my natural inclination to be alone) because I feel like a GUY much of the time. So I guess I'm just writing this all out to help myself make sense of it all and my feelings when she said "oh you're going on a girls weekend!" I couldn't really say "no, because I have gender identity issues and wouldn't exactly fit in, so it's not top on my list". So instead, I'm saying it here. thanks for listening...