Late night feelings

[BigBrother]

Ever end up sitting up late finding it difficult to drift off, or wake up in the middle of the night unable to easily get back to sleep with something occupying your mind that'll probably end unimportant to you when you wake in the morning, but is keeping you up now? You don't necessarily need to be actively looking for answers from others, maybe you just want to get some thoughts written down somewhere. This thread's for you.

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I watched When Harry Met Sally last yesterday for the first time, and one of the things that (for some reason) stood out to me was these close friends that each of the main characters had outside of work at the various stages in their lives despite the many time jumps in the movie. I feel like that's something I've struggled with over the years a lot. Maybe it's just me and my own personality and inability to retain friendships. I can be very closed off and don't exactly make it easy for people, heck a coworker just the other night was asking me how long we had been working on the same team (we're split up into 4 groups that all normally only interact with each other in passing unless people are working overtime or end up covering gaps in other teams) and I laughed that she's remarked many times that I used to be such a rude bastard and it took years to break me out of my shell with her once she ended up on mine. 

But I have had people that I've spent time with outside of work that I get along with well and it generally ends up the same way. You leave jobs and it just becomes harder to see each other, you try and the other person doesn't so you stop trying (that's how I ended up years without any friends having cut off everyone from my school years a long while back), they move away, etc. I guess I always wonder when I see people that not only maintain these relationships but also continue to forge new ones how they manage to do it. I find it hard to get time for myself to breathe most weeks. Maybe I just encourage it. I go to the cinema alone, I game mostly by myself (apart from the odd occasion with my brother-in-law), I don't drink alcohol so I avoid work nights out most times they happen. I often see people lamenting the challenge of making friends as you get older and away from the years of school, college and that point in life where you're bouncing from job to job and regularly meeting new people your age. 

Is it just the modern age, or has it always been this way for everyone? Do it early or face getting left behind? Maybe I shouldn't miss it. I'm a loner at heart and have been for a long time, something I remind Leelee often when she sees me in those moments where I just want peace and little more for a while. So maybe I've actively asking for it. But every now and again I find myself craving more, different connections with other human beings.

I think it's definitely different than how it was. Maintaining friendships is bloody hard when we're all on different work patterns and we each have five different inboxes ("I sent you a Facebook message" "Oh, I don't use Facebook, Signal me" "Well I don't have Signal, what about WhatsApp?" etc etc etc).

There aren't a ton of shared spaces either, especially when you remove alcohol from the equation. When I was doing my MFA over half the class was international, and they were stunned that if you wanted to socialise after, say, 6pm or 7pm, you really had to head to a pub or bar. Which isn't ideal when you've got work the next morning (or if you don't drink!).

I think we're all living more fragmented, solo-ish lives. It's packaged under independence...but at times it feels like deliberately structured isolation. "Can't meet your friends, feeling lonely? Why not invest in Chat GPT premium - you'll always have someone to talk to" *throws up* And if you're kinda more...solo... by nature (I'm definitely in this bracket too) I think there's a confluence of factors coming together.

tl;dr fuck late stage capitalism.