It’s so crazy that it’s almost the end of the year. I don’t think it will fully sink in until I have a random day off later this week for the holidays. And I’m very grateful I get some time off from work. I will only have 1 extra day that doesn’t have any work because one of my jobs doesn’t have any days off for the holidays because I already get Sunday and Monday off. But I will still have other days that I don’t have to be up as early as normal to work, so that will be nice.
And with the end of the year and the holidays upon us, I think a lot of us do some reflection on how the past year went and how we feel about how we spent our time. I will be doing more of an end-of-the-year post next week when I recap my goals, but I’m still taking time to reflect on this past year. More specifically, I have been reflecting on my friendships and social life.
It’s always tough to find time to hang out with friends. I make an effort, but often one of us will have a crazy schedule and things get delayed. It’s not that we don’t want to hang out, it just doesn’t happen and before we know it, months have slipped by before we try to reschedule. But I do try to stay in touch with friends even if it’s not necessarily happening in person. I think staying connected with my friends through text and social media does help to maintain a friendship, even if it’s not enough to keep it going forever. But when you do have that virtual communication, it helps to make those in-person hangouts feel like you haven’t missed a ton of time together.
I was able to have brunch with a friend recently whom I hadn’t seen since the beginning of the summer. But we had stayed in touch regularly so when we had our brunch, we were able to pick up like we had seen each other just a few days ago. And it was so great to have that face-to-face time with a friend. I know I need to do that more often, but it’s tough when so many of my friends don’t live in LA anymore. And many of my friends who are local live very busy lives. I don’t blame any of my friends who have been too busy with work or family to hang out, but it’s always hard when you realize you haven’t seen someone in person in years because you just don’t have similar lives anymore. But I still do what I can to keep those friendships going because I never know when I will be able to rekindle a friendship that may have slipped away in the past.
That’s why I do things like sending out my holiday cards each year. They aren’t anything fancy, but I like sending something to people who are friends of mine and who I want to keep our friendship going. It’s not that expensive to do them, especially since I send postcards now instead of regular cards so postage is cheaper. And I hope that my friends who receive these smile when they get something fun in the mail from me.
I think I will always try to be more social and focus on my friendships each year. It’s something that has to be worked on or else you will realize you have lost touch with someone you used to talk to all the time. I think I’ve done a decent job this year with meeting up with friends and keeping my friendships going. It hasn’t been perfect, but I have been able to reconnect with people this year that I hadn’t been able to in years. And I’ve already started to make that effort for the new year by planning some more brunch hangouts since brunch seems to be one of the times that I can usually meet up with someone and not worry about how late I’m going to be out.
Hopefully, whatever things happen with my friendships and social life in the new year will be positive! And then in a year, I’ll be having the same feeling about the end of the year and I’ll only have the best memories of what I was able to do with my friends in 2024.
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Starting To Wrap Up 2017 (or Getting In All My End Of The Year Things)
Fitting In Social Time (or Taking Advantage Of My Weekends)
Thinking About My Relationships (or Starting My 2018 Reflection)
A Special Birthday For A Special Friend (or Celebrating A “College” Friend)
An Unexpected Friend Hangout (or Helping Out And Getting Social Time)
Last Mentoring Group Brunch For The Year (or Switching Things Up For Next Year)
