I realized today that if I keep going the way I am I'm going to burn myself out. Everything about job searching, from the process of doing the applications to the uncertainty, is unpleasant to me, I've been having health issues, and there's been some comment drama on one of my fics. So, I'm trying to cut down on the unnecessary stress-causing things in my life, except there are some that I don't know how to deal with. There's this guy. Okay, it's actually two different guys but the problem is the same--they both want to talk to me via various online means (Facebook and Fanfiction.net, respectively) more than I want to talk to them. They're not unpleasant people so much as they are exhausting to interact with, because interacting with both of them involves a lot more thinking about word-choice and tone and how I'm coming off than I'd prefer. Facebook Guy is an acquaintance from college; we had a class together and he apparently had feelings for me which he now knows are not returned. FFN Guy is an acquaintance from several fandoms back; he's unintentionally rude a lot and I try not to return the favor even when he talks about his fic (constructive criticism, I remind myself). So, I don't want to be mean to them, I just want them to stop talking to me for a while? I'd prefer to stay on good terms with both of them if I could. But since both of them recently restarted conversations with me, and I did respond to them, I don't know how to do this without seeming weird or abrupt or rude.
Something like "Hey, it's really great we've had a chance to talk again, but I'm dealing with some heavy IRL stuff right now. Any way I could take a rain check for a bit to sort it out?" but maybe with more words. Let them know that maybe it's not them specifically, but you're in a weird place and can't handle too much individual attention on people. If you feel up to leaving an open sort of invitation, that might help (something like "Feel free to message me anytime, I just might not get to it for a while since I'm pretty busy.") but it's not a necessity. It'd probably be easiest to just make it clear that you can/will miss their messages and not be able to respond, which makes it seem less like a deliberate break off with them and more like an issue of all the stress you're under right now.
Thanks! Yeah, I think that might work--especially maybe the "feel free to leave me messages, I just might not get to them right away" because that takes a lot of pressure off of me and my responses, but lets them still talk if they want to talk. I appreciate the advice; I'm really bad at this stuff sometimes.
