Hey all,
It's my fifth week of classes at university and my first week before midterms, but for some reason, I've got something else on my mind this week: staying in touch with your friends.
Maybe it's because I'm starting to drift away from some of my orientation friends (which is natural), but I've been thinking a lot about my ability to keep the unbreakable bonds I built in the first 18 years of my life.
It's reminding me of something an old soccer coach of mine said just before I graduated:
In a time where a "loneliness epidemic" is expanding further than ever, I feel this is a good reminder. Unintentionally or not, we choose to be strangers, to not expand on relationships with our acquaintances, to drift away from our close friends, and to make "me time" a personal endeavor. Many of us act like seeing our friends on Instagram is the same as having that long-overdue chat. It's sad and pretty worrying.
In fact, there's a decent amount of evidence out there that loneliness can severely impact your health.
So, to sustain my mental health, I plan to set up a system to try and keep in touch with all my friends.
It'll probably be something like a friendship list (an idea I stole from Ali Abdaal) with all the close friends I never want to lose touch with. I want to organize the list by how long it's been since I've contacted each person. That way, I can monitor the list and connect with each friend at least once every three months. Hopefully, I can hang out with everyone in person, but video calls work too.
Still, I'll have to do more thinking to refine this idea. Currently, this mental setup feels a bit artificial. Like, calling someone every three months for the rest of their life without pretext is a little weird, and while it's easy to stay in touch with my friends who play video games, finding other ways to hang out online is hard. Maybe I'll start playing fantasy soccer or hold some movie nights, I don't know.
The other thing I'd like to add is some way to keep track of people I'd like to talk to more because I'd like to develop new friendships outside my social bubble and within the places I frequent. It's no use having a bunch of friends you're a long way away from if you don't also start making friends in your town or city.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my little brain dump. There's a lot to think about with social connections, but I hope you all take some time to think of how to keep your most valued relationships.
Because I think the worst thing you can do is to give up a lifelong connection just because "life's too busy."
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
-Ethan
Things I'm Enjoying:
📚 Books - Both Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon and How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens were driving influences on this blog post. Specifically, they've both helped me change how I read from a slow, careful style to a quicker one that helps me find and analyze the best, most unique ideas more often. If that sounds like an intriguing idea to you, I suggest you check them out!
👨💻 Tech - This is a very college-focused buy, but I think a portable speaker is a must-buy for movie/YouTube nights with friends. For one, it makes all the media you're consuming sound so much better, and it also helps remedy those feelings of exclusion people can sometimes feel when they can neither hear nor see what's playing on the tiny laptops you use as TV screens.
💻 Website - Chess.com - I like chess a bit, so I've found Chess.com's puzzles a great way of taking a small brain break while keeping my brain in that critical thinking mode. Funnily enough, the fact that I don't pay for the premium version of the site is also a blessing because I can only play so many puzzles before the site tells me I have to pay (which is my signal to get back to work).