lack of connection.

It seems as I get older it becomes harder and harder to stay connected with old friends and even hard to forge any new connections with any potential new friends. Maybe it's the fact that I'm married, and perhaps some people just think Lisa and I are all caught up in some sort of wedded bliss with no room for others...but that's just not true. Lisa and I spend nearly every free moment with eachother, and we really do like to share our time with others. Today we had an old friend over, and he was pretty down on himself because he thinks he's gonna get laid-off soon and he's not sure what to do. So we took him out to dinner and gave him a few beers and hopefully helped him to forget about his crappy situation for at least a couple of hours. Even though we spent our Sunday with just about the most depressed and unenthusiastic person we know, we were just happy to have another person in our presence.

Don't get me wrong, Lisa and I love eachother quite intensely and we certainly like spending time together, just us, but it can be very isolating when people seem disinterested because they perceive that we are somehow instantly boring now that we are married.

I remember when I was in my late teens and early twenties I felt like I could walk into Denny's or any other Diner and see at least 3 people I could call my friends. I remember there were people's houses that I was welcome to walk into any time. I remember my phone used to ring on a daily basis and I could expect the voice of a close friend on the other end...sometimes asking me for advice, sometimes giving me advice, sometimes just to shoot the shit, sometimes to ask if I wanted to come hang out...none of this happens anymore. Hanging out with friends now has to be scheduled around work or school or their freaking kids or significant others...people who used to live within a 6 mile radius of eachother are now scattered across the state, the region...the country.

I suppose all of this is part of growing up...being an active member of the "real world"...but it truely sucks at times to feel a void where there once was this great connection. Sometimes I look at people who are still living up where we went to high school, and I'm kind of envious. And that's pretty fucking weird because the whole time I was living there I couldn't wait to get the hell out...and now that I'm gone, I wish I was back.

I guess I'm just missing my younger days when people weren't all fractured and busy and coupled and working. Is this what happens when you get old? You get to busy for friends?