Today Is Our Life

Being back in San Diego is grinding me down. I feel the familiar sink of last summer coming back. With the weather not quite hot enough to go to the beach -- although I did manage to get lobster fried the other day falling asleep at the pool -- I've been a shut in all week. Someone asked if when I do my four or five days of being at home all day, if I get depressed or antsy. I answered that I generally don't, because I'm more social and interactive online anyway. But somehow a tipping point happened and right this moment my answer would be different. I'm just wanting to sleep all the time, waiting for the next event to happen. Luckily things are happening soon so this feeling can only last a few more days.

My lips haven't touched a burrito yet.

At dinner the other night I told my friend about my no settling policy in 2011. She came at me from the opposite perspective. Her recent experiences have taught her that everyone just wants a little bite of everything, and people are constantly feigning for and piling too much on their plates. "You can't have it all," she said. Then she gave me some more food for thought about whether or not our socially networked generation is just too easily tempted toward something else. Following that she challenged the idea of me judging other people's "settling." Without a whole lot of pre-constructed defenses available, I said I'd have to think about it and get back to her.

I realized a big difference between how recent friendships have formed versus past ones. Before, the majority of my friends were formed through massive hanging out. Like we'd hang out all.the.time. You'd get to know someone by being around them for days on end, over years and years. Or at the very least I'd have a period of some months where we'd be on call every day. Now when I think about who I look to connect with -- especially back home -- it's a handful of friends that I've only seen maybe a few times in our shared history.

We get together for boba or coffee, a theater movie, dinner, some mutual event we both have an interest in. We connect through catching up and conversation. While that's great and all, there's also a lot that gets lost in the knowledge department with just quickie interactions. I was trying to recall the last time I sat around with a new friend and just watched television and fell asleep. With one exception, it's been awhile. It's dawning on me that this is how it could be from here on out. People don't have time to just sit around and hang out. Even recently, with friends I've known for years, I've only gotten a brief glimpse of their domestic life. It felt weird not to know, even if it kept things new. It's like being inexperienced in a particular friendship even though you feel like a veteran.

Related/unrelated: I used to take note of what people ordered at restaurants so that I could predict their food choices in the future. Just a little game I played with myself to stay sharp. Somewhere in there I stopped paying attention. Now I have no idea what people are likely to eat and I keep asking non-vegetarians if they're okay with meat. "Rachael can't eat that. Oh wait, you can? Nevermind."

"So, I realize now that I don't know that much about you and vice versa. It's like we opened books about each other at a random page somewhere in the middle and started from there."
-Friend's email from 2005-