Tag: friendship

PostGrad

Bumble BFF – First Impressions

I’ll start this off by saying I haven’t met up with anyone in real life from Bumble BFF. And I’ll follow it up with saying that I hated dating and making friends is just like dating…so I hate this also.

If you’ve been following me for a few months now, you’ll know I’ve had little faith in Bumble BFF from the beginning. Trying to capture if someone will make a good friend from their photos and a few sentences on their profile is impossible. But for an introvert like me, it’s the easiest way to get myself out there.

So I tried. I swiped and widened my age range and location range to get a good group of people. I matched. I started conversations and let them be started by the other party. And they all fizzled within a couple hours. Shallow small talk makes it hard for you to actually get to know someone and if you’re anything like me, I hate texting in the first place so it’s hard to even get past that small talk.

Someone on the app told me that unless you make plans, real plans not just floating the usual “oh yeah let’s hang out.” Then you won’t actually become friends. This turned me off the app because it almost seems like you have to match someone, have a short conversation, then meet up with them immediately.

I haven’t given up completely. I didn’t delete the app from my phone. But I’ve been keeping busy on my own so it doesn’t feel like a good time anymore to try to incorporate someone else into my life.

If you have any Bumble BFF success stories, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Maybe I’ll get back to swiping one day.

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PostGrad

The Easy Ways You Can Support People

I love to support people, especially people I’ve known in the past and people who have supported me. I have a lot of sorority sisters and even people from high school who I haven’t kept in touch with, but if I see they’re on a creative endeavor I’m so happy to help.

Because supporting people can be just as easy as liking their Facebook page, following them on Instagram, retweeting a tweet. It can be as easy as sharing their work with your audience, your friends, your family. And just those small things mean so much to people who are just trying to do what they love.

That’s why it surprises me when people choose not to do the easy things. I don’t get angry when I see people I know personally unfollow me, I’m just disappointed. Because even if my content isn’t exactly your thing, why not just stick around for support? Is it that hard to throw my photos a like or skip over my stories?

I don’t like to talk about these things much because it’s such a trivial thing to complain about. I just believe what you put in comes back to you and down the line if you need something from me I’ll have this bad taste in my mouth from when you couldn’t do something as simple as following me on Instagram.

Comment on your friends photos and tell them they look hot, congratulate people you know when they start hitting their career goals, like a band’s facebook page, retweet a podcast’s tweet, talk about that blog you love. These are all easy and free ways to support people. I’m going to end this with a challenge for everyone to do one of these simple things this week. A little goes a long way.

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PostGrad

The Girl I’ve Tried To Be

I’ve never really felt like I fit in. Being quite an introvert and a homebody, I’ve felt myself try to change on many occasions to please other people and to just be accepted.

I’ve tried to be the girl that was too cool for school. The girl that only kept a few friends, hated all her teachers, hated her parents, and just didn’t try very hard. It left me with only a few options for college and no friends after I left for college. I chose to be around the wrong people, so leaving them behind wasn’t hard.

I’ve tried to just fit in. I felt like I was inserting myself into other people’s friendships the first two years of college. Thanks to a couple of great people who helped me along the way, I found a group but had to do everything I could to actually become a member of that group. I felt lost, felt like I was being pulled in 100 different directions.

I’ve tried to be the party girl who just didn’t care. And I didn’t, for a while. It was probably the only time I felt people enjoyed being in my company but it was all an act. An alcohol-induced version of myself that was much more fun and much more charming than sober me. When all was said and done and there weren’t $2-you-call-its every Thursday-Monday in the real world – I was empty.

I’ve tried to be myself and that just left me more hurt than any of the facades. Every time I tried to push past my awkward walls and reveal the innocence inside me, someone would come along and damage it fast. To the point where I can barely see my old self anymore, to the point where I’m so guarded I don’t even know who to be.

So I retreat and stay where it’s safe. Make an appearance every once in a while, try to show the people I love that I love them without feeling like I’m trying to be something I’m not. The girls I’ve tried to be all haunt me, I’m just trying not to be a ghost of myself anymore.

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PostGrad

Making Time For Your Friends In Your 20’s

When I graduated college, my friends and I all cried over the fact that life would be so different without us living just a hallway away from each other. But I don’t think I realized how different it would really be.

We all have jobs and relationships. Some people have houses and dogs. Some of us have demanding schedules. It’s really really hard to stay in touch with your friends and it can be easy to let it just fall to the side when you know they’ll always be there for you when you need them.

But needing them doesn’t always mean you’re having an actual crisis. You need your friends a lot more than you think you do, even when you have a support system at home. It’s not the same as the comfort your friends can give you.

They’re probably going through what you’re going through and you probably haven’t taken the time to properly talk about your life with someone who isn’t with you all the tine. Your friends can help you, it doesn’t need to be a time of despair. It might just be a time where you feel like you need a little more fresh air.

It takes work – a lot more work than some people are willing to put in to keep friendships around. But it’s important work. It’s the same as the effort you need to continuously put into your relationship. You can’t just expect to put people down and pick them back up when you need them.

Send the text, make the call, put together some plans. Be the person who is always reaching out with dates to see if anyone can get together. It’s exhausting and can be frustrating – but your good friends are worth it.

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PostGrad

Somewhere In Between

I feel pretty weird about this stage of my life. While I know I don’t need to have everything figured out at 24 years old, I do know that there are some things that I should feel more comfortable with.

But everything is very up and down at the moment. I just moved into a new place, so where I live will be a constant for probably the next two years. Therefore, I really don’t have any big life changes coming down the road – and I kind of thrive on change. I don’t plan on moving, don’t plan on changing jobs, don’t plan on making any relationship steps. Which is all fine, but the lack of change makes me uneasy.

And I feel like I should be more comfortable with my friends, the way I spend my time, the way I look. But I just can’t find a balance.

My friends all have their friends and they all live more than an hour away making pretty much everything hard. I’m tired after work so I don’t really do anything exciting – probably the only thing worth mentioning is my blog but that has become so integrated into my life. And I can’t get past any fitness plateaus, I’m so stagnant.

But what do I do? Join a club at 24 years old? I’ve never been an outgoing person and just the thought of trying to make new friends makes me want to hide under the covers. Do I just accept I’m at a weird transitional part of my life and that the puzzle pieces will fall into place soon? Because so far I’ve learned when you expect things to get easier, they don’t.

Being 24 is weird.

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PostGrad

Friendships in Your 20’s

One thing no one prepared me for was how different friendships become after you leave college. In college, you live with your best friends. You eat with them, go everywhere with them, you rely on them like family. Then *poof* graduation comes and you all have to separate.

It’s hard to get on the same schedule after that. It’s hard to see each other, make commitments to each other, and stay in touch. It’s hard to keep that family type of feeling alive because you’re relying on other people now.

It kind of feels like things start to fall apart because you were so used to knowing everything about someone and now you only get to see them once a month. Friend dynamics change. You make new ones, old ones fall off the map, and some friendships start to take priority over others.

Effort is required on both ends to keep a friendship going and it’s frustrating when you don’t live near each other and more effort is being put in on one side and none on the other. I think friendships in your 20’s means sometimes we just have friends who are there for a good time, not the hard times. And we can’t put all our care into those friendships anymore.

It’s fine to keep those people around for the good times, but we can’t get upset when they don’t reciprocate the care we show. Then there truly are friends who are in it for the long haul. Friends who you only see once every 3 months, only text once a month, who you can still turn to at the end of a long day even though it feels like you’ve been strangers for a while.

Friendships in your 20’s is all about putting yourself and those who care first and leaving the rest as a secondary thought. We’re growing up, we can’t put all our time and energy into people who don’t do the same for us. It’s sad, but it’s time to move on.

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