Is There Anybody Out There?

I can’t help but notice that, as of recent, my ratings have taken a dive.

If my blog were a programme in syndication I would certainly have been cancelled over the last month or so, as many of my regular readers seem to have drifted away.

Is this because I have ceased to be interesting? Is it just the time of year? Is it that blogging is now fading slightly from our consciousness or is it simply that other things are getting in the way?

And I feel like I do at work: where all but one of the people that used to make it fun have slowly but surely left for one reason or another.

Friendships can often be like that: they burn brightly for a time and you cling onto the light for all you can – just to remind yourself that you exist. And then one of you moves on and you promise that you will most definitely keep in touch…and then twelve months have passed and you’ve lost their number, or else your life is very busy and frantic right now…

When I first started work it was after a long period of unemployment and I was fortunate enough that there were two or three other people of a similar age working there. We hung out, went to nightclubs at weekends, loaned money that we really didn’t have…and one by one we all got different jobs and partners and got that bit older.

And although I still try and maintain contact with most of them it’s a one-sided battle: one never picks up the phone when I call – the other asks me questions via email and then never responds to the reply and you feel like you’re just beating your head against a wall and getting nowhere.

It’s sad to think that one of my oldest friends is someone that I have known since I was five years old, but in the last five or six of those years it always seems to have been me that made the effort: I’ve only seen his kid 2-3 times and he’s six years old now. But then families and work and problems take so much of your time and I can’t expect him to be constantly in touch – priorities change.

And I think that one of the most difficult things for anyone to accept is that we are not at the centre of our friends universes – like Buffy tells Jonathan when he goes into the tower to shoot himself: the reason no one noticed his pain was because they were too busy dealing with their own.

When you do finally pick up the phone, or drop that email, to an old friend they are usually pleased to hear from you and you can wonder “if they are so pleased to hear from me, why didn’t they call me?” Good point: answers appreciated on a postcard.

Just recently I’ve been so busy worrying about my life going nowhere and all the worries surrounding my current job that I’ve been guilty of it too – people I should have phoned or gone round to see have remained just numbers in my phone book – and you wait and you hope that maybe they’ll contact you…and you can end up feeling like you’re shouting into the void and no one is listening.

And sometimes I still miss those voices that we lost along the way: like it’s been over twelve months since A. Stageman posted on Eyes Closed, Jazzing – but I still check her site in the hope that one day…and in the hope that, wherever she is, she’s doing ok…

And then there are the days when you feel like you just can’t be bothered anymore and its time to walk away because you’re the only one whose making the effort.

So I’m setting you all some homework guys: ring (or mail) an old friend – someone who you’ve been meaning to call for a while, someone that you still care about but has somehow been pushed to the periphery of your life. Someone whose usually the first to contact you.

Remind them that you still care

Remind them that they still exist

Spread the love.