Friends

This is the first time in my journal where I don’t really know what I want to write about. I’m in a weird mood right now and there’s nothing new I feel like talking about so I’ll write about a topic I discussed with a friend awhile ago. The topic was friends and social circles. About two years ago I felt like I was stuck in a rut. I was mostly hanging out with a handful of friends I’ve had since high school and getting tired of doing the same things over and over. Pretty much every weekend I would end up either going out to some crappy club and be bored or hangout at a friend’s playing video games and drinking. Either of these can be a blast every now and then but doing nothing else all/every time gets VERY boring. Plus you basically never meet new people.

I was getting frustrated and tried getting these friends to try new things and hopefully meet new people. It didn’t really work, and I was starting to get depressed that I couldn’t sway the group. As I mentioned I love the outdoors, going on trips and adventures in the mountains. I seemed to be doing less and less of the things I wanted to do and anytime I tried to plan something it was met with apathy (I just tried to use “unenthusiasm” and spell check has taught me this is not a real word, I’m learning) or everyone ended up backing out in the end. These are still good friends of mine, I love them and see them regularly, but the way things were going at the time I wasn’t in the social circle I wanted to be in and I was starting to find myself hanging out more and more with people I didn’t want to be around (friends of these core friends).

When I was getting ready to test for black belt and doing the assignments I had to memorize “Mastery,” by Stuart Emery. His ideas on mediocrity really hit home with me and one line in particular, “surround yourself with people who ask more of you,” meant a lot to me. I took a good look at my situation, thought things through and shortly after, reached a breaking point. I realized things were not going to change unless I took action. I decided to actively go about improving my social circle and I still am today.

I called up a few old friends from my JFW years and some other people I regret not knowing better. These people are people that share the same values and interests as me. For some reason I never really used to hang out with them unless we were on some trip together. Things went well and I started seeing these people more frequently and met other good people through them. I started doing new things: going to improve theater, pubs and pool halls instead of clubs, festivals, Settlers of Catan (best board game ever!), tea houses/coffee shops, and I started to frequent the mountains more often. I now have a completely different social circle than I did a couple years ago. I’ve met so many new and great people since then. I feel like I now have a group of friends that are always willing to try new things and go on adventures. Every weekend is a busy week end now and it feels great knowing there is always somebody I know ready to meet up at any give notice.

Being surrounded with good people that I expect more of, and that expect more of me, is an extremely positive influence. It makes life more interesting and helps mold me into a better human being. I think ones friends and activities can help or hinder the direction of one’s life and we all need to take a good look at them and see if things could be better.

I’m glad I picked up the phone.