Welcome to reality. Pursuing one's passion seems to come at a price-- you need to at least try to mingle around with people who have the same interest as you even though you might not click with them. (Although I'm aware that it is not a must to mingle, but it's in my nature to at least poke around with people first.)
And then after some initial snide remarks with people who might not be at the same page as myself I tell myself that it's time to not be so sensitive, and it's time to be a person who lets seemingly snide remarks bounce off herself. There are such people who exist and others can make jokes out of them, and they laugh it off and sometimes laugh back at the other person. I admire such people-- they don't give a hoot about what other people say.
I still can't shake off the feeling that people hate lawyers. Only a few though; thankfully for this world not a lot of people are so narrow-minded.
But now I know that I don't need to shake off the feeling, I just need to let it bounce off me.
As poey mentioned a few days ago: in relationships, no one cares what difficulties or emotions you are having; people are only interested in what you can offer them (anything under the sun-- emotional support, money, specific skills, etc.). So no point moping about emotions and wearing a glum face. I just have to focus on what I want out of my life.
But I concede that mingling with people who don't click with you is taxing and possibly quite time-wasting.
Until today, I always thought that I could make friends with everyone-- friends as in trustworthy friends who can chat with you-- as long as I was friendly and smiley. But now I take that back. Friends are hard to come by. Everyone else is just a colleague, or an acquaintance.
I didn't go for the gathering today to meet up with friends and chat about everything under the sun. It was a gathering purely for business purposes-- to mingle and show my face, to show that I'm interested in the people who share the same interest as me. And I was definitely met with pleasant surprises-- spoke to cute people, nice people. So I'm not totally disillusioned.
Although the price of this party/gathering was, my mum didn't sleep till I came home at 12.30 am (and even so, when I left the place, the party was still going on). That's my uptight mum for you, but I can't and won't fault her because mums are just like that.