[S, G, B, T]old Friends • Brady Salz

Soup's Whatever by Mixtapes. A perfect song for writing things about people.

First of my soon-to-be-many forced writing sessions. The first topic I could think about was friendship and all the different kinds. I think the classical saying is something a la

New friends are silver, but old friends are gold

My mom would always say something like that at least. The next step is to go from old to all the other words that you can make besides gold. The immediate ones that came to me were sold, bold, and told. How can I make these work?

Told Friends

To be totally transparent here, I wrote down the [s, b, t]old when I was feeling clever, and resolved to get to this post later. Well, now later has come, and what did Told mean? It definitely was not a “told you so” context. Passing for now.

Bold Friends

Social media is ProbablyNotGood but whatever, I still use it all the time. I definitely get major FOMO¹ from the ideal world pictures on Facebook/Instagram that my friends upload. I don't know how people can afford to do all of that, and I feel like asking is so… hm, rude? No, not rude - but it feels in poor taste. Regardless, within that sect, you always have the people who go all the way. I'm talking about year long trip in Thailand or Zambia all the way. I would absolutely love to do this, but I have no idea how to even begin!

On the other end of the spectrum are the ones who just completely pursue their dreams. I'm talking about the people who work a retail or desk job but still find the time to write and record music. I barely have the time to sit down and write for this blog once a month - how do they do it? Those are the conversations I want to have. This means I'd have to reconnect with people that I haven't really talked to since high school. I'm absolutely atrocious at that. There's a couple involved ~reasons~ excuses for that, and not confronting them is easier. Maybe in 2018 I can try and climb that mental barrier. After hearing that Jake passed away, I really tried to think of the last time we had talked. The answer was utterly embarassing - I don't want to let them happen again.

How to maintain friendships over long distances, both physical and mental? That's a great topic for next time…

Sold Friends

Sold as in sold-out is the context that immediately comes to mind for me. This is probably a pretty aggressive section, so I should preface it by saying I'm no angel either. There are definitely some things that have me comprising my morals (ride-sharing apps for a big one). But enough about me, I definitely know a few people who have “sold out”, and I kind of cut myself from them. I work in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Golden Tech Town USA. The country seems to have reached a kind of tipping point with tech fascination - I see stories from non-tech people all the time hating on Facebook, Amazon, Uber, etc. They're [rightfully] fed up the addictive practices, blatant disregard for privacy, and mega-monopoly of it all.

I think I know enough to not just blame the entire tech scene, but there are a few massive bad actors. Unfortunately, those bad actors still make $$$, and have insanely lucrative perks if you work there. I used to understand why people choose to look the other way and take the money, but I really can't anymore. It's not like their stuck there - those are very difficult jobs to get and you have to be quite smart to get through those interviews. I am more than confident that all of my friends at these companies could easily find another job, but they choose not to. Despite living in the same city and [probably] working on a lot of the same stuff, I just feel like I have nothing in common with them.

Then there's people who went into the other BigEvil industry, finance. This is a blog post for another time, but I am 100% one of those “two beers in and full socialist” people. This one is harder ironically, because the friends I have in finance are some of my best friends. I think the fault lies on me here, because I am afraid to bring it up honestly. I really value my friendship with these people, but I don't understand how you can spend the majority of your life/time working at a company who just makes money from nothing, and ruins the entire American economy… ok, cutting it off for now!

Old Friends

Alright, enough negativity. Let's bring it back to something happy to end this out. I tried quite hard to reconnect with some of my friends from high school this Xmas break, and I think it worked out pretty good. There's a lot of great people who I passively ignored [forgot about] and it's just starting to click with me what that means. It turns out that no one really changes their cell phone number however, which is super cool. Since I've been pretty good about backing up and storing all my contacts, I have all the phone numbers I've ever receieved basically.

It also turns out that people are pretty cool with cold calls/texts? I just… went for it over break and nothing bad happened. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it was a fear I had - albeit an irrational one. Maybe they would be mad I had ignored them, or maybe we wouldn't have anything in common and talking would just be painful. None of those were true. I probably sound like a broken record here, but that's how you conquer fears right? You admit they were wrong all along, and you do it with a lot of evidence. Regardless, even if it is just being normal - thanks for being normal with me, everyone!

I debated setting a NYE requirement to force myself to reach out and talk to old friends on a reoccuring basis. There's a CRM tool for people called Monica that I think is super cool, but it has a huge set up cost. Not sure how I want to approach this. I like the idea quite a bit, and I'll continue to look into it. I don't think being “forced” to talk to people who I used to spend all my time with is the correct way of describing this, but that's kind of what it is. The important part to end on is that I'm not really forcing myself to talk to anyone, that's the easy part. I'm just forcing myself to think about them - and as far as I know, that's a kind and humane thing, so nothing bad can happen from it.

First forced writing session of 2018 - done! Nice.

Fear of missing out ↩︎