Social Butterfly

It's been a very social week -- a house shower yesterday, a Thirty-One delivery/Barnes & Noble Starbucks treat this afternoon, dinner with a friend this evening, and Starbucks with friends tomorrow and Friday. Combine this with Fourth of July festivities, and this is more socializing than I've done in three months!

I'm finding harder to be a social butterfly now that I'm retired. Unless I make an effort, exposure to other people can be pretty limited, and add writing  -- which tends to be a pretty solitary pursuit -- to my daily schedule and it's easy to get stuck in a solo rut. And while I readily say yes to invitations that come my way, I sometimes forget that friendship is a two-way street, and get lazy about being the issuer of invitations.

As a result, I end up with a sort of feast or famine social schedule. I'm feasting this week, that's for sure, and remembering how much I enjoy the company of these friends with whom I've been meeting. Having retired from one career while I was still young enough to initiate another one, I tend to be something of a hard charger, measuring the success of each day by how much I have accomplished, and forgetting that time spent with friends is a bonus -- one of those things that I not only enjoy at the time, but am recharged by as well.

And so I'm not going to berate myself for posting this twelve hours late. Instead, I'm going to resolve to enjoy more outings like these, and to remember that road of friendship is a two-lane byway that needs to be maintained on both sides because when it is, the view is quite spectacular.