Confessions of a Blogaholic

Last night during my marathon Twilight movie spectacular, I started thinking about something sort of random.

Think back to when you were a kid. Your parents took you to a park where other kids were running around and it would be mere minutes before you were elbows deep in the mud or running around a baseball diamond or chatting it up on the swings with complete strangers (other kids, I mean...not creepy old men or anything weird like that). Making friends and being social is natural for children; all it takes is a moment of commonality and *bam* you have a new friend.

Throughout your years in school, making new friends was as easy as starting a new school year or getting a new class schedule. Each new set of faces brought new opportunities for friendships; at the beginning of the school year, the person assigned to sit next to you may have been a stranger, but two weeks into the class, you were suddenly best buds and hanging out at the movies on the weekends.

College is when these friendships and this ability to make friends starts to wane. Suddenly, you are friends with your peers while in classes with them, but as soon as the final exam is finished, that friendship is over. You have that awkward moment of saying, "Uh...good luck in life. Nice to know you," then that person is gone just as quickly as they showed up.

Once college is finished, it seems like a person's ability to make and keep good friends is finished as well (at least in my life). I have two close friends that I have had since those friendship-foundation years in high school, and that's really about it. I can even feel the closeness of those friendships slipping away now as we all move on with marriages, families, careers, and life. Meeting people at this stage in life is not as easy as just showing up to the park or getting the luck of the draw in class; meeting people takes work and effort. You have to put yourself out there and talk to strangers--and where exactly do you GO to put yourself out there and talk to strangers? So much of social networking is done online these days, and if you aren't one to sit around on chatboards, Facebook, or forums, or if you don't have enough time to devote to building online relationships (and really, who does??), how does contemporary social networking extend to offline friendships?

I guess what I'm saying is I didn't realize how my social life was changing so drastically until I tried taking a Mommy's Night Off and realized I didn't have anyone to call. I didn't realize how much work maintaining friendships was until I started feeling like my closest friends were being pulled away by circumstances (the fact that my husband doesn't necessarily get along with either of my closest friends' significant others doesn't help either..). And I certainly didn't realize how important having a social circle was until I started thinking about what it would take to rebuild one.