@Brandon A Same name on Insta...it is definitely an unfixed IG for the moment though.

@Isaiah Goodman Welcome back to the outside world and I hope this go 'round goes better for you. Having a strong positive social group will definitely help keep you on a better path.

Start organizing your best life stories and anecdotes. Practice retelling them and look for places to insert a joke or witty comment. Have some ready to go at all times so that when you are in a conversation and someone brings up something that relates to one of your funny/interesting stories you can smoothly gain control of the conversation and turn attention toward you. Once you have a little momentum you can engage other people to tell their own anecdotes that relate to your stories and use these to snowball their engagement with you. Keep an eye on current events as well and look for things in the news to bring up in conversations. If you have your group laughing or any other kind of response that will get the attention of others that aren't in the conversation it will draw even more people in. If you do this a few times at the same location with at least some of the same people you'll be the guy everyone wants to introduce other people to and are happy when you walk in the place.

@Brett Stringfellow I don't unfortunately. It was most likely advice I heard in passing sometime in my younger days. For me it's having several anecdotes from my life that are always easy to pull up details and relate to the current conversation. One of my best stories I am only a minor player in it but is easily pulled into conversation and gets laughs every time. It involves my brother falling and banging his head hard enough that he had temporary amnesia of sorts where he had no recollection of anything that happened seconds ago and his memory was wiped out to about 6 months prior to this happening (he is fine but that 6 month chunk of memories never came back). His lack of short term memory created some fun situations where got stuck in loops doing the same thing over and over because he couldn't remember doing/saying them. Because of this, myself and another friend of ours are the only ones that can tell the story properly because he doesn't remember it. lol

Super non-confident people that need reassurance for every tiny thing they do over and over again.

@Alphonso Cornelius Settling your debt with a credit card company is absolutely a negative on your credit report. Paying in full is positive but settling for sure is not.

@Alphonso Cornelius I am only speaking from personal experience. I settled 3 different cards many years back and it dropped my score by over 50 points.

If it is something small or maybe personal to the friendship (like an inside joke type of gift) I personally think that is OK and doesn't give the wrong vibe. As a broader question though, at what age should people grow up and stop expecting/wanting gifts for their birthday?