Annual Review for Friends

I've realized that all my blogs and vlogs are about weightloss and running.  Damn how boring? I don't even do family or kid ones anymore.  Or even ranting ones!  I need to be less focused with my content and appeal to my readers and followers that don't give a crap about running and weightloss! right?


Well today I had this thought.  Today I was thinking about how I've been at my horrible job 6 months now.  6 Months TO THE DAY.  And normally you get evaluated by your supervisor ever 6 months.  This got me thinking about evaluating things.  I think I evaluate all things in life.


Today I was thinking on how every year you should evaluate your friends.  I know, you're thinking I'm a total bitch right now, but hear me out.....Have you ever heard the saying that a person can only maintain so many personal relationships, and if you add a new one, another drops off to compensate.  It's a real thing people--it's called Dunbar's Number, "the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained." No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number. It lies between 100 and 230, but a commonly used value is 150.  Dunbar's number has been most popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, where it plays a central role in Gladwell's arguments about the dynamics of social groups.  This is actually one of my husband's favorite books.


Over the last year, the dyanmics of my friendships have changed a lot.  Having a baby tends to change your circle of friends.  You make new friendships with people that have children, probably due to the fact that you both have kids, which are the central focus of your life.  Other parents understand this focus, while your non-childbearing friends don't always empathize with the fact that yes, you do in fact enjoy spending your weekends at the local park and letting your kid finger paint in their highchair while you snap 50 photos.  I'm not saying my friends don't like me anymore, or that they hate my kid, I just have shifted focus in my life, and my lifestyle doesn't jive with their's as much anymore.  Before Child (BC), we were invited to random get togethers, outings, etc, now we get invited to the big events, but smaller more random events dont' necessarily include us, which I understand they got sick of us saying we cant' go cause of Mimi, babysitters, etc.  



Other things have changed in my life.  I've changed jobs--this has separated for me by direct evidence that some people that I thought were friends, saw themselves as merely my "work colleagues."  Oh well. that happens. 


Another thing has changed in my life.  Now that I have NO FRIGGIN TIME to do anything fun, when I do have time or energy (physical or emotional) I want to concentrate that time and energy on people that enrich my life and who are caring and good friends.  In my absences from my usual social circles, home with the baby for 10 months nursing 24/7, and switching jobs, etc., I've found that I was maintaining some friendships for the wrong reasons.  And also maintaining friendships that impacted me negatively.  In those months home with baby, I have found some really great friends too :-) 


I did a little friend clean up on my facebook account a few weeks ago.  I realized that some people you friend simply want to cyber stalk you.  They got the facebook friend guillotine. Now i'm trying to concentrate the friend free time I have, whether it's for a coffee, a long evening chat, etc, to people that have really been true friends.  I hope that I'm as good to my friends as they have been to me.  I feel so blessed to have good people around me to support me through all my ups and downs this past year.  I'm going to try to give all that goodness back :-)