RingoI’ve made a friend list. And I intend to slowly and methodically cross names off of it.
So I’m a crappy friend. Some my friends will probably disagree with this, but they’re wrong. They probably are mistaking my normal personality for good relationship habits. I’m a pretty decent human, who tries to have good morals or at least morals that agree with the general Modern Western Society moral code. Things like being nice to people, being generous with stuff and time, ect ect.
However far too many people that I value as friends have not gotten the treatment they deserve from me. At my very core I am a selfish person, like most of us I suspect, and when offered things I tend to take them, even if I know I will not be able to repay. As such far to many of my relationships in terms of monetary benefits, goods, or even labor/favors have a discrepancy in terms of input and output with me generating a large friendship trade deficit for lack of a better phrase. In particular, I find that I do not put forth the effort to maintain connection in terms of conversation and time spent together that my friends do. To the point where if they do not put forward active effort to keep up correspondence, there is none. This is very regrettable to me and something that I wish were unacceptable.
To correct it I have started a personal project. Everyday I will reach out to a person that I haven’t had meaningful interaction with in what feels like too long. I will sing their praises, let them know how much they have meant to me, and inform them I miss them. I will then attempt to make concrete plans for a time to meet in meat space and failing that, will attempt to keep up a long conversation catching up on what I’ve missed in their life.
I’ve made a friend list. And I intend to slowly and methodically cross names off of it.