I haven’t thought at all about popularity since high school. I was so glad to leave those days behind and move on to college, which was much more my style. I loved meeting people from different geographic areas and eventually found my niche. Nowadays, at work, I’m more of a loner but it’s of my own choosing. I have work friends but I often have to run errands or unwind with a magazine or book.
As a working parent, my time is mostly devoted to work or kids. We rarely get any couple time. I see my family because they help with the kids. I’m happy to get one hour of exercise per week. It’s easy to see how friends fall to the wayside.
What makes it worse though is that no one is inviting me anywhere. I find out about casual family get-togethers a day before because everyone assumes I can’t make it on the weekends. This is sort of true but it’s a strange assumption because I’m not always saying I’m busy or tired and I didn’t start turning down invites; the invites just stopped coming.
I should be glad because it spares me from having to make excuses. However, I would have liked to join in on some events if only I had been given more notice.
Of course I’m assuming that I haven’t turned into one of those annoying parents who can only talk about their genius kids. Anyway, I should just tell people and hope that invites start coming again. What stops me is that I will probably end up turning down 99% of invites.
This brings me to another related topic. I hate Facebook and smartphones, or rather technology’s influence on my relationships. In pre-Facebook days, or before all my friends started using it and smartphones, I received long emails on a frequent basis. Now most only update and post photos on Facebook so you get out of the loop if you don’t use it, too. And instead of emails, I usually get a quick text update written on their phone. I know it takes more time to write a separate email to that one friend when you can update all your “friends” at once, but I like to think that there are/were some things that you share with a particular friend, not everyone who liked you on Facebook.
How do you stay in touch in this tech-driven age? Do you ever feel like you’re the last person NOT on Facebook? Or do you love Facebook and think hold-outs are out-of-touch Amish-types?
