October Reset: Friendship

I put off writing this October Reset post because it made me nervous.  Friendship is a sensitive and difficult subject for me.  I am not really good at friendship, yet I crave it like water.  I am motivated most by relationship, but I'm terrified of others coming face-to-face with my flaws and insane quirks.  So, a friendship reset is something I've needed to do for years, but it seems so deeply rutted that I'm overwhelmed at where to start. 

First things first I guess.  I love deep meaningful relationships where loyalty and authenticity are mandatory.  As a kid and through adolescence I usually felt deeper (or at least more loyal) about my friendships than the friends did.  I was always a bit of a know-it-all which meant not really a barrel of laughs, but got a lot of people asking me for advice.  And truth be told, who doesn't like being asked for their 'expert' advice, right?  But when the crisis was over, most would move on to their regular friends.  Before you think I'm throwing a pity party or something, understand that I have been blessed with some amazing people in my life where I've spent some amazing weekends of fun with. 

I seem to remember a crazy weekend with some beautiful Bradford girls that involved way too many accidents and emergencies, but made for some great laughs and stories.  Whenever the subject of no friends would come up, my mom would always advise us to look for others who needed a friend.  I remember a couple of sweet Tidmore girls recently back from living in Honduras for a few years that became fast friends at first because we all didn't really know anyone.  Teenage years into my twenties brought some really great people close to home that were the building blocks to so many adventures - Melissa, Annette, Darcy, Olivia, Brandi, Andrea, Jessica, Afton, Stephanie and I could just keep going.  

So, yes I was blessed with friends, but friendship is complicated and then adulthood starts happening.  People get real jobs, get married, children take over and before you know it, an introverted, easily-overwhelmed girl who was always scared to really put herself out there first anyway, finds herself drifting farther and farther away from true friendships.  Why? Because life for one thing.  If you don't see each other on a weekly basis, then staying in touch requires more.  If your timelines in life (if you marry, age of your kids, values, etc.) don't align, it requires even more commitment.  And then there is me:  All of that plus my life and kids taking up a lot of the limited free space in my brain.  I go to bed longing to be closer to people - to be invited or included in things, but figuring a random text message at 11:00 probably won't be welcome or bring me that much closer to them.

The snowball of drifting away from friendships is sometimes impossible to avoid.  When you have a baby (and then two and then three), your life has to change.  For better and worse, you have a new job in guiding that little soul.  Your priorities have to shift.  And that's a lot of what has happened to me.  I take my job seriously as a mom and before I knew it friends were changing.  And then I want to do friendship perfectly or effortlessly - both of which never happens.  So I tend to give up before I try because it can't be either.  Thus, arms length or whenever its easy, which can be really unfulfilling. 

So, a friendship reset for me involves starting over from this new normal.  This new normal has 3 children, awkward introductions, 40 lbs of baby weight to lose, and a mountain of things to be grateful for.  My desire for friendship to be perfect or easy always required me to be the perfect friend.  If I was thinner, if I was funnier, if I was more stylish, if I was a million other things, then maybe friendship would be easier.  The first reset truth is that friendship requires work and maintenance, things I've resisted in so many areas of my life over the years.   The second truth is that I'm not perfect and neither is anyone else that I might be friends with.  I have to be okay with both of those things.

This month has really turned a corner in my heart with recovery from the really rough first half of this year and my little racecar's first 6 months.  I'm feeling more hopeful and joyful than I have in several months.  Ladies, motherhood makes so many other things in life hard.  Now may not be the right season for seeking friendship beyond what is already available to you.  That's a reality that we must accept sometimes.  I've been a lousy friend on multiple occasions - and knew it - but just never seem to have enough energy or brain power to fix it.  Now my season of life, especially with the racecar being our last planned pregnancy, is shifting.  I'm not exactly declaring I'll be everyone's best friend in 30 days or less, but I am committing to the pursuit of real, deeper friendship.  You might not be in the right place for this kind of reset right now, but tuck it away for another day when the time is right.  Isolation and arms length is just not how we were designed to live.  

If you find yourself in the presence of an awkward exchange or a nervous invitation from me or anyone else, try to have mercy on us.  Even if we aren't your forever friend, you might be just the practice we're needing to not give up!

Maybe Popularity Is the Last Thing You Need

One of the most universal desires is the need to be well liked.  From elementary school to the senior center, there will always be questions about fitting in or being like everyone else.  Starting around middle school and escalating through adolescence into adulthood, we all battle with cliques and feeling accepted by our peers.  It's natural. Often there is even a need to sacrifice minor preferences to encourage camaraderie and friendship.  The trouble is that fitting in quickly turns into an idol, sweeping away identity, character, and morals if we're not careful.  Parents, in our own insecurities, feel desperate to get the latest whatever for our kids so they might blend in and avoid childish scorn for being different.  And, honestly, I get it.  I have always hated feeling different or left out.  Pick a category in life and I - at some point - felt negatively different than those around me. Unfortunately, my most defining memory from adolescence was the first one.  My first weekend away from my parents with friends and because I decided to 'like' the wrong guy (at least I think that's what I did wrong), I turned into the least preferred person and they fought over who had to sit by me in the car. Talk about trust issues, huh? :)  Believe me when I say that I understand the innate need to be liked and accepted.

Still, when we get caught up in always making sure we or our children are 'flying under the radar', we are losing out on the more important things.

Benefits of Living Different

1) Empathy.  When life doesn't ALWAYS go your way, you learn what it feels like.  Then, you can empathize and help others when life doesn't go their way (because it happens to everyone eventually).

2) Stronger Identity.  Popularity often requires your identity to be shaped by the masses.  Those masses, even the well-meaning ones, aren't usually around for very long and when they are their opinion changes.  When we are forced to decide who we want to be, in spite of the crowd, it really means something and sends out roots for a person of worth.

3) Above Average Results.  Going with the grain here in America, right now, will usually result in being an average American.  Average Americans are sick and out of shape, in a large amount of debt, addicted to something, unfaithful in their marriages, disconnected from their family and entrenched in illegal activity.  Unless we are intentionally working to gain the opposite of these, this is where Americans are naturally arriving. When we learn how to not fit in, we are learning the skills and discipline it takes to succeed where others don't.

Like so many things, a good life is a balanced life.  Is it wrong and awful to be a popular kid in high school?  Or is fitting in - maybe just because you're a likable guy - going to ruin your life? No and no.  There are lessons to be learned and opportunities to be taken on both sides of the cafeteria.  Let's just remember that being a good person far outweighs being an accepted person.  Some days I have to choose between the two.  If I don't recognize many of those days, then I'm probably choosing the latter by default.

Be different.

No Nonsense November

We let things that don't matter dictate how we live our life.  Wait, not we, I.  I do that.  I work overtime to make it look like I don't, but it still happens.  I'm also bad with friendships, not being in control and stress.  I am not the person you want on the operating table or in the middle of a secret mission.  I crack under pressure.  And like I mentioned last time, I'm ready to be more open and straight-forward about things instead of hiding behind fear and irrelevant concerns.  So, I'm calling this my No Nonsense November.  There's just no sense in being anything but real, authentic and genuine.

So, in closing and in the spirit of no nonsense, I'd just like to say that I hate when people have monthly themes, but then don't finish or hardly last half the month.  And I'm honestly afraid of doing that again this time around, because I'm caaarraaaaazzzy busy.  But when I write, I'm such a better person to be around and it satisfies something in my soul that few other things do.

“November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.”
― Clyde Watson

Consider the Reset Button Pushed

I'm going to be 34 on my next birthday.  I just watched an episode of Parenthood where Kristina tells someone she's 34.  That can't be right because she's married, has 3 kids and, like, my mom's age.  Except it is right and for some reason I always see my mom about the age that I started recognizing her as a separate person - so somewhere around 34 probably.  Aside from the, "Wow, I'm old" feeling, it got me thinking about how easy it is to get stuck in time somehow, not progressing, but just assuming that everything is being tended to.  All the while, if you're not careful you quickly grow into the thing (s) you hate and denounce.

One of the things most important to me in my life is authenticity.  I hate small-talk and fake personas.  I'll even scoff at flowers that are fake purely on principle.  Come on, people, be real!  And yet.  And yet I have a confession to make.  I want so badly to keep you from thinking badly of me some days that I work my tail off to not be real.  My mind is constantly overrun by thoughts of judgements you may or may not be making about the real me.  How can I avoid them and what could I do/say to combat them or justify myself?  It's exhausting.  And a little disgusting.  I hate it when people won't just be honest with me when I ask them how they are doing.  If I didn't want to know, I wouldn't ask.  But then I get all twisted up in knots trying to say just the right thing so I won't sound pathetic or weird to you.  Why do I herald authenticity to the masses, but hesitate to tell you how much I hate cleaning my house and that I only do it because I figure you'll say I'm a bad person if I don't?

So, here's the deal.  Kid #1 liberated me in some really important ways.  Kid #2 is waking me up to the reality of how short life is.  With those things under my belt, I'd really like a reset button.

Consider the reset button pushed.

Let's start with life right now.  Summarizing something in a few sentences makes it seem easier than it really is.  My husband is getting his MBA while working full time and I have two kids, two dogs and teach piano part-time.  One sentence there, but that one little sentence is so much.  And so hard.  Having two kids is hard.  Doing anything else is even harder.  And I really want to do EVERYTHING else too.  I'm optimistic that it gets easier, mostly because everyone says so.  Until then, writing is the best way to keep me from stagnating and poisoning everything around me. (I can get pretty cranky)

What's your favorite motivator when life is harder than it feels like it should be?