Making new friends takes a lot of time

Check me out, inspecting my navel. Remember when you were in college, and making friends was easy? You could spend hours hanging out with your friends in your room or the library or wherever. You could stay up until two in the morning talking talking talking.

You'd pour your heart out, tell all of your life stories, find similarities and common interests. If you partied, you'd go out together from Thursday through Saturday (at the very least) and stay up until the wee hours of the morning. You'd meet each other's boyfriends (or girlfriends, whatever) and you'd share each other's clothes.

Then we graduated from college and people went separate ways. Some went together to big cities, others moved where they could find a job, some went home to live with their parents until they figured out what they wanted to do with their life.

Most of us got our first "job" during this time. Still single, it was still easy to make friends at work. We could talk around cubicles or across the aisle, email each other notes to make fun of our boss's lame suits or bad haircut. Some of us got married young and it was exciting to plan a wedding and have all the showers and parties.

Well...I'm well past that stage in life. I'm on the uphill climb to forty {uphill in a numerical sense, not in a negative way at all} and I just don't have the free time I used to have to make friends. I'm busy, but not in a bad way. It's just that every hour of the day is usually dedicated to something else.

I have two kids. I have a husband. I have a job. I have a house that needs keeping. In a fringe sort of way I have employees, if you count my cleaning lady, the daycare girls, and my dry cleaner, just to name a few.

I don't have hours in a day to talk to my old friends or make new ones. I don't work in an office anymore where I can talk to my co-workers over desks. I work out of my house and out of my car. I'm alone on the job, but ironically, my job is to go talk to people in different offices all day long. To be friendly, to be cordial, to be polite. But we don't make friends. We don't hang out on the weekends.

I've made some great friends through work, but they live in different states. Such is the fate of a salesperson who covers a large geography. The next person is pretty far away from you.

I've often said to myself I'd like to have more close girlfriends in St. Louis, but I don't have the time to cultivate them. Friendships are like gardens, they need tending. They need time and they take effort. They're wonderful when you have them and they're elusive when you don't.

I'm currently working on a new friendship with a girl who has a lot in common with me. She's a lovely person, we just don't have a lot of time to get to know each other! Hopefully we'll be able to get together more than once a year. That'd be nice, eh? And isn't it funny that no matter how old you get, you still call other ladies "girls?"

I've been lucky in my life to have some wonderful friends. Some old, some new. Some internet, some real. Whatever that means. Everyone is real, right?

I'd never trade those free hours I had in college for what I have now, though. I'd not trade the time it takes to care for my children or the time I spend with them for the free hours to stay up late on the phone making new friends. Obsessing over the latest mishap in my lovelife. Ordering Domino's Pizza at 1:00 a.m.

I love my life now. I just wish I had more friends.