Soapbox Moment

This stage of life has been an interesting one to learn how to adjust to. I certainly don't have the answers, but I do have some questions and I have a keyboard.

I have good friends who live in the same town as me, [and/but?] many are married or in serious relationships making it sometimes hard to make plans or convince them to go places besides a living room. I also have good friends who live anywhere between 200 and 7,000 miles away from me, [and/but?] it's often hard to stay in touch because of this thing called life that somehow always seems to build a crutch on the word BUSY. Most relationships have changed for the different; this is not always better or worse, but definitely not the same- which is a fancy way of saying "different".

1.) When did all this happen...?

I feel like college sort of deprives its average student of "Ye ol' Post-College Reality Check".

In college, you are just in college! You are a cool college kid! You stay up until 5:00am and can eat a whole box of Pop-tarts in a few days! You leave for class 5 minutes before it starts, choose how much you want to pay attention that day, and get fed knowledge from someone who [hopefully] knows what the heck they are talking about! Even your part-time job requires only about 4-5 mindless hours of your day! Ah yes, college is fantastic. And while post-college life has also been truly and perhaps even more so enjoyable, I feel that the learning curve has been significantly steeper. I'm (and dare I say "We're") figuring out how quickly and sometimes drastically life can change from one season to the next.

2.) How do I adjust to the dynamics of friendships, relationships, coworkers, daily schedules, responsibilities, decision-making, etc etc etc changing over time?

3.) Considering that I'm a person who is generally not averse to change, will the change ever stop and consistency take over?

4.) If yes, is this a good thing? If no, is this a good thing?

The reason I've been chewing on this metaphorical gumball of a blog has been due to this past week's particularly heavy onslaught of Reunionage (copyrighted term, Sarah Finn, 2013).

It started last weekend at an outdoor wedding in the blistering heat of Fresno, CA. Our "extended friend group" had not been together- wherein all of us are definitely present- in a very, very long time. We were clearly thankful for this wedding as a reunion point, as demonstrated by the fact that we danced for nearly 2 hours AFTER the bride and groom left. This was a blissful gathering and I was reminded how much I appreciate being around people of the "pick up where we left of" persuasion.

Then the reunions continued. One of my closest friends, Leigh, has been living in Germany for two whole years now. I visited her in Munich several times while over there, but had not seen her since around July 2, 2012 (but I mean who knows the actual day) when we hugged and cried on the train platform and said goodbye. In true Leigh and Sarah fashion, we cried when we first hugged again on Wednesday--and consequently annoyed some waiters at Alioto's. Here's a picture to prove she was here and that I'm not full of malarkey.

When I said goodbye after a few hours in the city, I felt weird. The day had made me feel happy and sad and refreshed and content and contemplative and nostalgic and bummed all at the same time. It's one of the strangest new feelings in the rolodex that I've encountered. (I filed it under "Sort this feeling out on your blog later or you'll become crazy.")

Then came more friends! Buddy and Shelby came to visit Pleasanton from SLO this weekend, meaning that I didn't make plans to even THINK about hanging out with other people besides the two of them, plus a couple P-town regulars. The weekend was everything it was hyped up to be and then some. Here's some pictures to prove I'm not full of hokeypokey.

Relevant tangent: I was reunited with Germany when we found a REAL Biergarten complete with the ridiculously heavy German benches, German menus, AND brats with curried potatoes! I didn't shut up about how happy I was. 

Saying goodbye after a whole week of reunion bliss made me feel really happy and sad and refreshed and content and contemplative and nostalgic and bummed all at the same time.... And this is where life is right now. It's being busy in the day-to-day and seeing friends when I get the chance to see them, then feeling recharged by those times. Though it's sad to say goodbye, this time of life yields more opportunity for great memories and excuses to travel than I've yet experienced. The people I care about are all over the world- some are much closer than others, but I am grateful for the moments I spend with them however frequent it may be.

I am thankful for this season: The balance of old scenes with new perspective on life, the old friends close and far meeting up in new places, the new responsibilities in old territory, the new opportunities to take advantage of, and the reunions that will always keep me feeling blessed.

Consider this soapbox.. vacated.