I will admit that WoW has been a larger sink that I originally thought; coupled with getting canned AND having a solid week getting a Con to go off without too many hitches pretty much put my "social" life in the toilet the past month.
Expect another few weeks of strangeness out of me while I get used to my new job.
It depends on what you mean. I'm used to having most of my friends "disappear" unless i make an effort to keep up with them. Then again, i'm sure some or many of my friends feel the same way about me.
I think i can safely say that there isn't a friend that i see on a weekly basis (at least not counting my D&D game, which i haven't run in over a month). Maybe not even a monthly basis.
I've been blaming my "shrinking circle of friends" on the damage that My Big Imployer's hiring freeze did to this area's social situation 20 years ago. Please don't tell me it's just as bad in a thriving metropolitan area!
I tend to make close friends rarely and suddenly. I depend on activities where I meet a lot of diverse people to bring them to me--music, church, classes, contra dances, etc. When the influx of educated professionals into this area suddenly slowed to a near halt a couple years after I moved back here, I had already built up a fairly large circle of potentially close friends through these activities but found it closed and shrinking, because none of us were meeting many new people in activities that interested us.
In ten years since my wedding, I've made one new friend as close as the three closest friends I had at that time. Three of the four have been chronically unavailable because of the combination of children and ever-increasing pressure from work. One I see at a weekly rehearsal, but not every week and not for very long outside of rehearsal time; one I haven't seen since last January, he's more terrified of the telephone than I am, and he might have answered my e-mail once in that time; one had a stroke last year and is hard to understand on the phone, and lives over an hour away. The remaining one that I do get to see and talk to fairly regularly is my retarded best friend from before birth, whose company can be emotionally stressful (less so now that he's in a decent work situation again, finally) and is hardly intellectually stimulating.
What makes this all the more frustrating is watching the way my wife systematically alienates her own friends. She has pushed away all but one of the six close friends she had when we first met, over things that to me would merit a brief hashing-out and agreeing to live with the differences. She's picked up new friends pretty consistently, especially among all her new academic and professional contacts, but with every little disagreement I dread that she's on the brink of pushing them all away at once and winding up with nobody but me.
Yes, but sometimes they just get caught up in their lives and forget they have friends and a network outside of their bubble. I understand that though.
I get distracted a lot too, and really love/adore my down time the older I'm becoming. So sometimes I don't return people's phone calls or stay in touch all that often just because I'm tired and have limited time after work to get what I need to do done. We really need a 28 hour day.
Anyway, don't be offended if your friend(s) are busy, but if they start treating you differently when you're in their company, that should raise a red flag that something is truly up.
If I 'ignore' someone, its not on purpose, but its just I have so much going on that I don't have the energy to make the effort to contact others, and of they do contact me, I dont have the energy to be around them. I know it's in part due to my depression that I've been fighting for years.
Yet, Im also the type who takes it very personally when someone doesnt slather attention on my 24/7 when I am seeking it. I've driven off a lot of friends with this contradictory (and rahter selfish) form of behavior. Im still working on it.
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Expect another few weeks of strangeness out of me while I get used to my new job.
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I think i can safely say that there isn't a friend that i see on a weekly basis (at least not counting my D&D game, which i haven't run in over a month). Maybe not even a monthly basis.
All this time
Though I suppose
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me neither
In ten years since my wedding, I've made one new friend as close as the three closest friends I had at that time. Three of the four have been chronically unavailable because of the combination of children and ever-increasing pressure from work. One I see at a weekly rehearsal, but not every week and not for very long outside of rehearsal time; one I haven't seen since last January, he's more terrified of the telephone than I am, and he might have answered my e-mail once in that time; one had a stroke last year and is hard to understand on the phone, and lives over an hour away. The remaining one that I do get to see and talk to fairly regularly is my retarded best friend from before birth, whose company can be emotionally stressful (less so now that he's in a decent work situation again, finally) and is hardly intellectually stimulating.
What makes this all the more frustrating is watching the way my wife systematically alienates her own friends. She has pushed away all but one of the six close friends she had when we first met, over things that to me would merit a brief hashing-out and agreeing to live with the differences. She's picked up new friends pretty consistently, especially among all her new academic and professional contacts, but with every little disagreement I dread that she's on the brink of pushing them all away at once and winding up with nobody but me.
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I get distracted a lot too, and really love/adore my down time the older I'm becoming. So sometimes I don't return people's phone calls or stay in touch all that often just because I'm tired and have limited time after work to get what I need to do done. We really need a 28 hour day.
Anyway, don't be offended if your friend(s) are busy, but if they start treating you differently when you're in their company, that should raise a red flag that something is truly up.
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If I 'ignore' someone, its not on purpose, but its just I have so much going on that I don't have the energy to make the effort to contact others, and of they do contact me, I dont have the energy to be around them. I know it's in part due to my depression that I've been fighting for years.
Yet, Im also the type who takes it very personally when someone doesnt slather attention on my 24/7 when I am seeking it. I've driven off a lot of friends with this contradictory (and rahter selfish) form of behavior. Im still working on it.