As I've mentioned before this has been a huge personal challenge for me in the last six months. After the lunch & learn, I had renewed energy to make more of an effort to attempt to fix this situation.
One of the biggest hold ups for me was the amount of trite conversation that occurs when you call a friends for the first time after months of no communication. It's all "So what's new?"...."Not much"..."How's work?"..."Ok". There's no realness there. All the things I loved talking about with my friends (the inside jokes, the advice, the laughter) don't exist because we don't really know what's going on day to day and don't share any recent common experiences.
The last two months I've made two major trips to Chicago and Dallas to visit two different sets of friends. In person the things we lost over the phone seemed to magically appear again. Especially after the Chicago trip we made the effort to keep connected and there's been a noticeable change in the quality of our conversations. I don't need to ask what's new anymore because I know. Instead we can joke about things that have happened even though we might not have been there together. Instead we can make plans about future trips and future visits.
Part of our ability to stay connected has been our ingenuity in using technology. The majority of my friends who gathered in Chicago have Blackberrys. We now have group bbms that seem to blow up each day with the amount of conversation that passes through. My friends who gathered in Dallas are all on Twitter. None of us use it more than to keep in touch with all the stupid things happening in our lives. But it's those stupid things that make us more connected. It adds that personal touch that brings you back to the good ole days when you did those stupid things together.
In terms of staying connected I've discovered that 30 seconds a day beats an hour once a month. Surely, I'll be able to carve 30 seconds a day out of my schedule. Keeping in touch now seems a lot more doable.
