Something that a lot of you guys are about to experience is not talked about enough and really fucking hard. Many of you will be moving across the country because your parents paid for your college. Between the fact that our economy is about to experience a 2017 SoundCloud rapper level of depression (notice I did not type recession) and the expectations set forth upon you, most of you will take the best job opportunity you get. So you’re headed to a new city, where you can’t just walk down the hall and trade pen rips for friendship, and there aren’t fraternities or sports teams where you can establish a bond with strangers, options are limited and you are/probably will be a little lonely.
Sure, there are always coworkers you can brush back some Hazy Little Thing IPAs with and talk about how your other coworker’s Tuna salad makes an entire room smell like the back of Aaron Hernandez’s car, but odds are, things won’t be the same. And that’s something that I’m sure many of us are learning in our twenties. As a kid, I was outgoing and eager to meet new people, but nowadays, the thought of introducing myself to some dude at a bar because I like his jersey seems psychotic to me. I’ll give girls this: I’m envious that two girls can go to the bathroom together one time and end up at each other’s wedding parties- but for most guys, that isn’t happening. Maybe that’s a direct result of “toxic masculinity” or whatever the fuck you want to call it, but I think it’s not the worst thing. Friendships between girls can end over an Instagram picture where one of them looks terrible; I would have to walk in on a good friend of mine EATING my dog before I stopped drinking with him on a Saturday.
To some degree, I’ve experienced this throughout the past year because I thought it best for my full-time job in digital marketing to live thirty minutes away from my campus. After the first time your boy walks into your room barred out, and you are in an important meeting negotiating CPAs, I think any reasonable person would also make the decision I did. It’s not easy, but it’s provided me (and it will provide you) with a Thoreaun year to work on yourself and appreciate the friendships you’ve made in life. The people I’ve found myself hanging out with locally are friends of friends or friends that I rekindled a long-dormant relationship with. There’s no real answer, but there is a best-case, and that’s to chase goals and appreciate the amazing friendships you can’t recreate. As a wise man once said, imagine if I never met the broskis.
