Evescafe

The boring truth is that everyone’s busy, working multiple jobs, walking pets, seeing therapies, training for marathons, grocery shopping, writing screenplays.

In colleges, seeing friends happened naturally, sort of like the weather. You lived and studied with pals, ran into them on the way to class and at dinner.

You could knock with someone’s door at any hour of the day or night and presto! Socializing! Now that you don’t live in a big cinder-block funhouse with 100 girls your age, you have to actually make an effort to see one another.

Alas, the TV show Friends sold us all a bill of goods by insinuating that we, too, might fall into a self-sustaining clan of sue hilarious, fabulous-looking, financially secure, happily insulated best friends.

In real life, we lose touch with people. We stop living within spitting distance of one another, and we certainly don't convene every Thursday for clever banter accompanied by a laugh track.

As complicated as stuff seems now, it only gets more so. I mean this in a good way: Your life is just going to get more exciting and full (oh, the places you'll go! the people you'll date—or marry!).

The busier your life gets, the more essential it becomes to spend your free time with friends who matter to you. And who matters to you is going to change radically as time passes.