I’ve talked before about how I’ve had to work hard as an adult to make friends. I lost a lot of my friends when my best friend from college and I ended our friendship and it was tough for me to start over. I was eventually able to reconnect with people I had lost track of in the past (social media was a huge help in doing that) and also went out of my way to make new friends. And after a while, I had a ton of amazing friends that I am incredibly grateful to have in my life and continue to push me to be the best person I can be.
Because I have so many amazing friends now, I do get lazy from time to time when it comes to making friends. I meet people at events and we friend each other on Facebook, but then we never really hang out. And my schedule is partially to blame for that because I’m still over booking myself a bit (I think life will calm down after Thanksgiving).
But lately I’ve been in opportunities to not only meet lots of amazing people, but to get to spend time with them and build real friendships. The SAG-AFTRA Convention is the perfect example of this.
I spent so many hours with my fellow delegates. A lot of the time, we were exhausted from long hours and lack of sleep which helps to put everyone’s guards down and make friendships much easier to start. I did know some of my fellow delegates going into the convention, but through the convention (and the fun of the gala), I got to know so many more people and I’m happy that I’m already finding time to hang out with some of them!
I had the chance to work with one of my fellow delegates when I did coaching for my audition I had recently. While I had an hour of coaching, I was really there for like 4 hours because we were having too much fun hanging out and getting to know each other.
I’ve seen delegates at the SAG-AFTRA Film Society screenings I’ve gone to lately. I’m sure we’ve seen each other at the screenings in the past (most of us go to as many screenings as we can), but since I didn’t really know them until the convention, I never really paid attention. Now, we are all running into each other at each screening and usually we also end up trying to sit together. It’s nice to have friends at the screenings with me since we usually have to wait in line to go into the screening (sometimes for a pretty long time) and there is always time to kill once we are in the theater. And while I’m always prepared with a book, I’d rather use that time to be social.
With it being the start of awards season, I’ve got a lot of screenings coming up. And I’m making a serious effort to try to reach out to my friends (old and new) to come and be my plus one for them. For the past few screenings, I’ve been able to bring a different friend to each one and that’s been pretty awesome. I get that one on one time with a friend while we are waiting for the movie to catch up on life and be silly. And that’s something that I know I don’t do often enough.
I know I always say this, but I have to make my social life a bit more of a priority in my life. These screenings are helping, but once screening season is done I don’t want to neglect my friendships. I don’t know what I’ll do to fix this problem. Maybe I should start going out after I do my late afternoon workouts, but usually by the time I get home all I want to do is shower, eat dinner, and be lazy on the couch for a bit before going to bed. My weekends are getting a bit packed with work obligations until Thanksgiving (seriously, I don’t have a free weekend until after then) but I’m going to start trying to schedule things with friends more in advance so it’s on my calendar and becomes a priority.
Even though I always have the concern about not spending enough time with my friends, I’m glad that right now it’s not a huge issue and that I’m aware of it enough that hopefully I can make sure that it’s not an issue in the future.
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