Friendship goals.

There is a part of my social life that sustains itself, with eat-streets and facebook and one catch-up flowing naturally into another. When I want to do something, I have a default group of people I recruit from.

For various reasons, I decided I need to invest a little more deeply in some of the other people around me. To build some more friendships that would be mutually beneficial, and also to love people who need a bit more love, and also to sustain friendships that I value through changes in life like marriage (theirs not mine). To fight the sometimes selfish gravity of old friends and comfortable ruts and isolation. The thing is, it's hard to know where to start, other than just by feeling like a failure or deciding I have enough friends anyway or putting it off until something happens spontaneously. I've got the means and the time and the energy at the moment, I want to actually do something, instead of vaguely wish and hope.

I decided instead that I should write down 5 things to do with 5 people, and do them before the end of the year. Then I would know I have invested some of my time in others. It sounds weird and cold, a list of "friendship goals". I'm not that kind of person. It's just that it is easier to do something overwhelming if you have a simple first step, like "1. see a movie with T". So I actually have a list.  I have no expectations of amazing results, and relationships aren't very measurable anyway; I just want to know that I've made an effort.