Relationships

This one has been brewing in my head for a few weeks now. It’s strange.

Do you ever feel like your life is a little bit like playing The Sims? Trying to juggle work, home, friends, other responsibilities and maintain all of those different relationships?

You used to have to give them a phone and have a chat with them to maintain that level of friendship. Absolute nightmare to manage, it still gives me palpitations now. Ha.

Sometimes, with the way that shifts are working out, its hard enough to maintain the relationships between the people I live in the same house with let alone people that I just don’t get to see as often anymore.

There are loads of people I used to work with that I considered as really close friends, once you remove that daily 9-5 exposure, the relationships start to drop off, and even though I think fondly of them often, there’s just not enough time in the day to maintain these relationships and they start to break down into acquaintances .

I don’t think there’s anything that anyone can do to stave this off people I used to work with from 3-4 jobs ago I still have on Facebook, they still pop up on my memories and they still make me smile but remove that thing you have in common, the daily grind and you just don’t have enough time anymore.

Throw in a few kids, family, shopping, constantly growing feet and bodies, Open University degrees and that 24 hours you have in a day seems to be an ever shrinking pool of nothingness.

I was talking to my dad about why he never speaks to or sees a friend that lives in the village that he used to work with and he just didn’t know he says it just happens. I remember we used to visit this guy fairly often as we had a shared interest in Atari and Commodore computing. But as we move away from those common platforms, relationships degrade.

Having started a new job 2 months ago (I can’t believe how quickly its flown) I’m paying more attention to how these relationships are degrading. People that I talked to every day, I’m speaking to once a week or so. Some people I’m not speaking to at all. It’s sad, but things move on and it seems to be the circle of life. You can certainly see how people as they get older and move away from work that they can lose those circles and connections.

Stay at home mums and things too it must feel so isolating.

I’m in a very good position, I have a job I love, a family that I love and I don’t want for anything. It’s still a shame that we have this 9-5 thing going on 5 days a week and the kids have school and it just stops us from being able to enjoy some of the finer things in life I guess.

There’s always retirement, if you make it that far and that’s where you’re meant to be able to enjoy those things that you’ve worked your whole life for. I just hope I get there and I get to enjoy it. Everything crossed. 🙂