The Bus to Jersey

If you asked me to sit down and design a wonderful life, it would be close to what I have now. I truly enjoy creative and engaging work, rewarding relationships, and where I live. I'm feeling a void lately though. You could diagnose it as the in-the- 30s-and-still-single malaise. Ok, I'll allow it. But it's not the whole story. Simply, I miss people. It's getting harder and harder to stay connected. In my own cycle of work, grad school, and other things, I feel like people get squeezed into my life rather than being the main event. I want more.

On a regular old Wednesday in the middle of the day I emailed Gianna, my old college buddy. We were part of a group of girls that lived together all four years. In that way, we were more than friends--we were family. The last time we saw each other was a little more than three years ago at her baby shower. Since then, we have exchanged, maybe, a few emails and texts. It's horrible because it became so normal and easy not to talk. She emailed me right back and invited me over for that Friday night--a miracle given her life is so packed with child, husband, family, and medical school.

Our reunion was not filled with fireworks or tearful confessions. Amid all the catching up, sometimes awkward, we just knew each other, knew how to be together--how to laugh at the same old things. I got treated to a home-cooked Italian dinner (Thanks to Gianna's mom). I got to dance around with my new three-year-old little friend, Nica. It was comfortable. It was brief. It was a better normal.

Here I am

It's 3 a.m. and I can't sleep. I'm not exactly troubled but I'm not completely at peace either. Eventually all thoughts lead to the same place: what am I doing with my life? 3 a.m. discontent is the worst. There's no one to talk to about anything. And I am a person that needs people. So of course, I turn on my laptop and get on Facebook. Face after face on page after page and I just feel even farther away from everyone I know. I feel disconnected. I feel empty. And I start to think about how it's been so long since I've talked to so many friends. And then I think about how I barely know the people I know anymore. This is Facebook's fault of course--the fact that I am in virtual touch with people from all corners of my childhood, my adolescence, my adulthood and the fact that we know each other by face, by name only now. And even with the friends I actually see in the flesh, too often virtual contact substitutes real interaction.

In my 3 a.m. haze, I make a decision to personally meet with all of my 320* friends and faces in 2011. This is going to be either the best idea ever or the worst idea ever.

Cue the mood music:

*number subject to change