Hi Guys! Happy Monday:) It’s December 5th which means that there are only three more Mondays remaining in 2016. It’s around this time of the year that we tend to start reflecting on the past year, while setting goals for the upcoming one. In the spirit of the season, I thought it’d be nice to share something that’s pretty much a mainstay on my list of personal goals each year: working to establish more meaningful friendships.
While I am a proud introvert, I am not a loner. I really enjoy spending time with other people it’s just that I prefer the group size and setting to be intimate, and after a while I’m going to need to go home for a nap lol. In reflecting on how well I’m living my life, I definitely factor in the friendships that I’ve been able to cultivate.
Friends are so important to me. They help to make my life experiences more meaningful and memorable. They celebrate my wins, they laugh with me, they’d cry with me if I weren’t a robot as my sister tells it, and they are some of my biggest cheerleaders. I’m so grateful for the friendships that I have, which is why I work hard to maintain them. In saying this, I still actively work toward developing more friendships. Why, you ask? This is where I’m going to say something that probably goes against what you’ve heard in the past. More friends are better. Rock with me for a bit on this one.
A lot of people say that it’s not about having a bunch of friends, it’s about having quality friends. Personally, I think it should be about both. None of us want to have flaky, manipulative, or backstabbing friends so I think we can all agree that quality is important, but here’s why quantity is important too. We tend to have a lot of different interests. When we have a lot of different interests and only a few friends, we can subconsciously put more pressure on those few friends to help us live out all of our different interests.
Let’s use an analogy here just because I love them. Having only a few friends is like being the boss of a company with only a few employees. Between these few employees they now have to juggle being your tech support, HR, accountants, communications specialists, secretary, web designer, and whatever else you need, which means you’re likely asking people to serve in roles that they weren’t cut out for. So don’t be upset with Mary Sue because she can’t figure out why the company website is freezing; she went to school for journalism!
The idea is that as you hire more employees (or gain more friends) the pressures placed on these individuals are spread out because they’re not expected to wear so many different hats. Your foodie friend that loves to try different restaurants with you for Sunday brunch may not be the person to call for a Saturday morning hike.
Now sometimes there are those magical people who share all of your interests, but these folks are few and far between. That means you’ll likely have to work to establish relationships with different people who can allow you to express your different interests. For example, I have a group of friends who are PhD students/graduates of my program. We meet up throughout the year to check in with one another, unwind, and uplift. We actually just met up yesterday for brunch. It’s been incredible having these ladies to talk to because they know what I’m working toward, and they understand the work it takes to get there.
These ladies are fabulous, but I’m more than just a student. I’m also a fitness enthusiast, a blogger, a baker, a lipstick lover, and a break dancer (I’m only partially kidding about this last one). If I want to talk about creative projects that I’d like to do for the blog or collaborate with a fellow blogger, I can’t necessarily go to them for that. Which means that I have to work to find other people who blog, who I can talk to about these things.
A few weeks ago I went to a blogger meet up in Raleigh and met some great ladies. We sat and talked for a couple hours about blogging, the highs and lows of it all, and strategies we use to get it all done. It was such a great conversation that I honestly wouldn’t have been able to have otherwise. I needed to make “blogger friends” who could appreciate what it’s like working to put out quality blog content in order to have that type of conversation.
It can be stifling when you feel like you don’t have people to talk to who can give you an outlet to express all of your different interests. This is why as many interests as I have, I will work to develop as many circles of friends who allow me to discuss and express these interests. So yes, quantity matters. But don’t forget about quality. And the next time someone tells me, “It’s all about quality,” I’ll politely say, “I beg to differ,” and maybe direct them to this post.
Let me know if you’d like for me to do a follow up about ways to go about making these new friends as an adult. #TeamYesNewFriends Lol
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