I have noticed lately that there has been a flurry of old friends reappearing on the radar screen... it seems that all of my friends that have been away doing graduate programs have completed them and are now back home looking for work... also, I am now of the age that a lot of my friends are getting married and a lot of people that I remember as little tykes are now graduating high school... where has the time gone? (a subject for another time, to be sure)
In high school, there was a time when my social life consisted of... ahem... Quiz Bowl practice... and Bust-a-Move (of the bubble bobble variety), and, later, going to movies and coffee houses... My closest friends (my inner circle, barkada if you will) would gather in my basement and we would go back and forth passing the controllers to each other whilst listening to the popping of bubbles and the really catchy but very silly soundtrack (well, it was stuck in my head so much that I added some break beats to a couple of the tracks once I started college, you know, to make it more tolerable to those not familiar with the game) but I digress, these friends slowly went to their different colleges, and slowly faded from the foreground while new friends were made or in many cases rekindled... but as college came and went - from house parties to clubbing to bar hopping to whatever social event was the flavor of the week... then, after college, careers and graduate degrees were sought, and many of these friendships also dissipated - leaving behind only the closest of the close...
But now that I have become accustomed to my career and now that I am settling down, I am finding that many of the friends that I have lost track of, lost track of me the same way I lost track of them... you stop caring about going out every night of every weekend. your social appearances start become less frequent, because the reasons you used to go (finding a significant other, showing off, because you were underage and found a decent fake, etc, etc) are no longer valid reasons. You start to think, why the hell am I paying $20 for cover and then paying $7 for one drink, when I can get a bottle for $20 and hang out with the same friends in a more relaxed setting doing things that actually bring us closer and don't leave us smelling like cigarette butts and sweat... (don't get me wrong, there are times when you want to go out and just dance, dance, dance - but your desire to do that - which,by the way, should be like everyday - gets outweighed by all of the reasons not to go out...)
SO, I start to see these old friends at functions and we start catching up, and then it brings back all of the memories and all of the times you shared and all of the reasons why you liked them so much... then comes the typical - "We should hang out" line, but you are too lazy and they are probably lazy as well - because then all of the reasons that you became distant come back, but really aren't valid anymore, but things go on until the next time you see them again, and the same thing happens...
This cycle is a tragedy, but how do you keep all of your friendships alive? It takes a lot of work, and I guess my thing is that high maintenance friends are not a thing that you need to sweat, for now, especially if you are planning and saving for a wedding and a house... also, I barely have time to talk with my closest friends... how do I fit in everyone else?
arrgghh... where the hell am I going with this?
Basically I want to end the cycle of old friends coming in and out, and just bring them in...
I need to finish (and revise this) later when I can let everything get absorbed into my head and I can rearrange it so I don't sound like a complete idiot...
but I think I'm too late on the sounding like an idiot part..
