Reconnecting
Hello all, and Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate!
I'm trying to gear up for this, my only full work week in December. I'm hoping it'll go by quickly, but that's probably wishful thinking.
This weekend was AMAZING! Friday night, Marcus and I went to Gabbie's birthday dinner, and then came home to the arrival of Laura and Lianna! They were in town for Laura's cousin's Bar Mitzvah, and they decided to stay with us :) We stayed up catching up and everything until around 1 am, and then went to bed because they had to get up early on Saturday. But we didn't...so I slept until almost 12:30 pm! It's been a long time since I slept that late, I think I was REALLY tired at the end of last week. Then we got up, hung around the house for a few hours until L&L got back around 2:30. Then we all went to hang out with Joel and Eli! Eli slept most of the time we were there, but he woke up towards the end, so we got to see him a little bit. He's such a cutie, hehe :-D We left there around 5:30, dropped L&L off at the hotel, then went home and lit Hanukkah candles and ate dinner. Around 9 pm, Pearl came over, and Laura and Lianna got back a little while later, and we all hung out for a little bit before deciding to go to IHOP! We hung out there for a couple of hours, then Pearl had to go home, so the rest of us went back home and ended up staying up talking until 2:30 am! We said our goodbyes, because L&L were leaving earlier than we'd probably wake up, lol, which turned out to be true. Yesterday, we got up around 11:30, and had a pretty quiet day of laundry, grocery shopping, Boggle playing (lol), and Netflix instant movie watching. When we got back from grocery shopping, Marcus convinced me to go to Chipotle for dinner, but when we got there it was closed (they were having their staff holiday party, apparently), so we ended up going to Chili's instead. Not quite Chipotle, haha, but Marcus paid for my meal, so hey, I can't complain ;)
Saturday night around 2 am, when our conversation with L&L was winding down into "we really need to go to sleep..." (lol), I had a sudden realization that I don't know why I've never had before. I realized that the one thing I miss MOST about college is the ability to have conversations like that - conversations that last for hours and really build a connection and a bond between friends, without having to worry about having to be somewhere at a certain time, or whether you have to get up early the next day (since these types of conversations usually tend to happen late at night - I guess because when you're tired, you lose some of your inhibitions). These conversations seem so hard to come by these days, for lack of time and lack of opportunity. I really enjoyed the conversation we had Saturday night, and I am greatly looking forward to next weekend, because Cliff is coming to stay with me while Marcus is in Florida, and I am hopeful that we will also have that kind of conversation!
On a somewhat unrelated note, an idea popped into my head last night that I'm a little surprised hadn't occurred to me before. There is a friend of mine who I used to be very close with, but have slowly fallen almost completely out of touch with over the last couple of years. I feel that I have come to a fork in the road with this friendship: either I can reach out and try to rekindle some communication and connection, or I can do nothing and the friendship will almost certainly fade into oblivion. In the past, I've tried to reconnect via AIM, email, even phone once or twice, with not much success. So last night, I had a new thought: maybe I should write a letter. An actual, handwritten letter, describing the depth our friendship used to provide (at least on my end), and explaining exactly where I'm coming from in no uncertain terms, and reaching out, to show that at least on my end, the desire to maintain the friendship still exists. I'm pretty sure that from my friend's perspective, there is some skepticism about where my loyalties lie and whether I will continue to stay in the person's corner, so to speak. The basis of this skepticism comes directly out of the lack of DIRECT communication between us, so my hope would be that in sending this letter directly to said friend, it would eliminate the skepticism and convince the person that s/he is still my friend, and that the only thing that can change that is our own inaction to maintain the friendship.
Last night, this letter seemed like a brilliant idea, and I was planning to start working on it at work today. But this morning, I am questioning the idea. I'm not sure if it's necessary, I'm not sure if it's worth the time and effort, and mostly, I'm concerned that it would put another load on my friend's already currently overfilled plate. So I'm writing about this in here to get some opinions. Do you think I should write this letter? My main concern is that while it's a long overdue gesture, the timing may not be right at this juncture. On the other hand, if I wait too much longer, it may be too late for the convincing I'm hoping the letter will do. So...thoughts?
I'm trying to gear up for this, my only full work week in December. I'm hoping it'll go by quickly, but that's probably wishful thinking.
This weekend was AMAZING! Friday night, Marcus and I went to Gabbie's birthday dinner, and then came home to the arrival of Laura and Lianna! They were in town for Laura's cousin's Bar Mitzvah, and they decided to stay with us :) We stayed up catching up and everything until around 1 am, and then went to bed because they had to get up early on Saturday. But we didn't...so I slept until almost 12:30 pm! It's been a long time since I slept that late, I think I was REALLY tired at the end of last week. Then we got up, hung around the house for a few hours until L&L got back around 2:30. Then we all went to hang out with Joel and Eli! Eli slept most of the time we were there, but he woke up towards the end, so we got to see him a little bit. He's such a cutie, hehe :-D We left there around 5:30, dropped L&L off at the hotel, then went home and lit Hanukkah candles and ate dinner. Around 9 pm, Pearl came over, and Laura and Lianna got back a little while later, and we all hung out for a little bit before deciding to go to IHOP! We hung out there for a couple of hours, then Pearl had to go home, so the rest of us went back home and ended up staying up talking until 2:30 am! We said our goodbyes, because L&L were leaving earlier than we'd probably wake up, lol, which turned out to be true. Yesterday, we got up around 11:30, and had a pretty quiet day of laundry, grocery shopping, Boggle playing (lol), and Netflix instant movie watching. When we got back from grocery shopping, Marcus convinced me to go to Chipotle for dinner, but when we got there it was closed (they were having their staff holiday party, apparently), so we ended up going to Chili's instead. Not quite Chipotle, haha, but Marcus paid for my meal, so hey, I can't complain ;)
Saturday night around 2 am, when our conversation with L&L was winding down into "we really need to go to sleep..." (lol), I had a sudden realization that I don't know why I've never had before. I realized that the one thing I miss MOST about college is the ability to have conversations like that - conversations that last for hours and really build a connection and a bond between friends, without having to worry about having to be somewhere at a certain time, or whether you have to get up early the next day (since these types of conversations usually tend to happen late at night - I guess because when you're tired, you lose some of your inhibitions). These conversations seem so hard to come by these days, for lack of time and lack of opportunity. I really enjoyed the conversation we had Saturday night, and I am greatly looking forward to next weekend, because Cliff is coming to stay with me while Marcus is in Florida, and I am hopeful that we will also have that kind of conversation!
On a somewhat unrelated note, an idea popped into my head last night that I'm a little surprised hadn't occurred to me before. There is a friend of mine who I used to be very close with, but have slowly fallen almost completely out of touch with over the last couple of years. I feel that I have come to a fork in the road with this friendship: either I can reach out and try to rekindle some communication and connection, or I can do nothing and the friendship will almost certainly fade into oblivion. In the past, I've tried to reconnect via AIM, email, even phone once or twice, with not much success. So last night, I had a new thought: maybe I should write a letter. An actual, handwritten letter, describing the depth our friendship used to provide (at least on my end), and explaining exactly where I'm coming from in no uncertain terms, and reaching out, to show that at least on my end, the desire to maintain the friendship still exists. I'm pretty sure that from my friend's perspective, there is some skepticism about where my loyalties lie and whether I will continue to stay in the person's corner, so to speak. The basis of this skepticism comes directly out of the lack of DIRECT communication between us, so my hope would be that in sending this letter directly to said friend, it would eliminate the skepticism and convince the person that s/he is still my friend, and that the only thing that can change that is our own inaction to maintain the friendship.
Last night, this letter seemed like a brilliant idea, and I was planning to start working on it at work today. But this morning, I am questioning the idea. I'm not sure if it's necessary, I'm not sure if it's worth the time and effort, and mostly, I'm concerned that it would put another load on my friend's already currently overfilled plate. So I'm writing about this in here to get some opinions. Do you think I should write this letter? My main concern is that while it's a long overdue gesture, the timing may not be right at this juncture. On the other hand, if I wait too much longer, it may be too late for the convincing I'm hoping the letter will do. So...thoughts?