James Taylor knows You've Got a Friend

I've taken a vacation from my life of late. No reading relevant news material, no keeping up with most of my intelligent sources for mental stimulation, no blog posts since August 3 but worse, I was snapped back to my reality today when I found that I've apparently vacated my friendships as well. These have likely been neglected far longer than a mere 3 weeks as my reading & writing but likely neglected far, far longer. I have not offered of myself, kept in touch, nor provided the very foundation of anything relating to my friendships. In my own preoccupation with my personal crisis (pl, cri-CEES), the complicated matters of the recent move, unemployment, and of the pending move back to my hometown after 12 years, I have neglected the most basic of friendship responsibilities. I've stopped being a friend.

To add to the shock of realizing what I've done I also had to reflect on the fact that I have cried to myself, complained, and had multiple pity-parties over how my friends have forgotten about ME, seemingly because of my pending move back home. I thought they had abandoned me and found instead that I have likely abandoned them through my own selfishness and self-absorption.

I think the most difficult piece to all of this is not only realizing that I have let my friends down and not been the best person I CAN be for them (and for myself) but that it took seeing someone I can only describe as an arch-enemy and former-friend, who turned on me in the most horrible of ways, has in fact maintained the friendships I have failed. AND – this enemy is a GUY!

Let this serve as a life-lesson for me because now, more than ever, I will rely upon good communication and BEING A FRIEND to MY FRIENDS as the sustenance for my future. It will be the thing to carry me through and I can only thank my lucky stars that I found this failing in myself early enough to take heed and step-up my own acts. I need to BE a friend to be WORTHY of those I call my friends.

To you all, I thank you for your continued friendship and patience when I’m an ass.