I’m A Bad Friend Because I’m Trying To Be A Better Person

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I will like your Instagram posts. I will write congratulations beneath your graduation and engagement photos. I will text you whenever I see something that reminds me of you and realize it’s been a while since we have spoken.

I will put effort into my friendships — but from afar.

It’s been hard for me to make time for friends lately. It’s hard enough for me to find a spare second to pursue my hobbies, for me to walk my dog, for me to relax and watch television for a half-hour before drifting off to sleep. Lately, I have no time for myself. I am always busy with something.

I don’t want my friends to think I have pushed them into the background because I still think about them all the time. I wish I could see them more often. Adult life has just made that difficult. There is always something that needs to get done at work or at home. There is always another task to cross off my to-do list before I can even think about making weekend plans.

I know there are sayings about how if someone is important to you, you will make time for them, but there’s only so much time in a day. Twenty-four hours flies by before I have the time to accomplish half of what I wanted.

I am trying to become a better person. A more successful person. And that requires a shit-ton of work. I am waking up earlier to exercise. I am going to bed at a decent time so my sleep schedule isn’t completely fucked up. By the time I’m finished with my work hours and laundry and grocery shopping, there isn’t much time left for fun.

I hope my friends realize how much I care about them. I hope they know I would spend more time with them if I had the chance. I hope they aren’t under the impression that I have pushed them to the bottom of my priorities list because that isn’t the case.

I am not trying to make them feel bad. I am only trying to grow. I am trying to be responsible, so when someone asks me to get drunk on a work night, I am going to turn them down. And when someone asks me to hang out at the last second, I probably already have plans because my schedule is bursting with chores.

I hate how little I see the people who mean the most to me. I know I have become distant, but that was never the intention. It was only a side effect of working my ass off in different areas of my life. I don’t see how I could have avoided it.

But I am going to try to find more time for my friends in the future. I am going to try to rearrange my schedule so that I have time for business and pleasure. I am going to try to balance my social life with everything else in my life, because I don’t want adulting to mean losing the friends I have had since childhood.