Matchbox

That's the title for my favorite Strung Out song. It may very well be my favorite song ever. And just like the song, the relevance of the title to the song and this post eludes me. They're playing in two weeks.

It's subtle the difference, but you guys do actually comment more when I don't write about politics. I'm even getting comments from some of yous who haven't commented for a while. I think the shift in writing is only coincidental because I think I'm kind of burned out in general on political stuff. I have ebbs and flows in my interest regarding that stuff. Don't worry, I'm still following it all and will post more as time permits. It takes a different kind of energy, though, to write about that stuff.

Sometimes it's scary how well Ipod shuffle knows me. I just got three songs in a row that I wouldn't have been able to pick out on my own, but having them brought up for me made me realize just how perfect the choices were. Thanks, Ipod.

I think all married couples are the same when it comes to maintaining friendships. I feel like they all think that nobody else does anything, but if you are willing to hang out on their terms then they have no problem keeping up the friendship. They only get distant because it's harder to please both people and have them both be interested in doing whatever it is that the other people are doing.

When I was at BYU I had this couple that I just LOVED, Steve and Hillary. They are some of my favorite people in the whole world to talk to because they both have very similar conversation styles - they are 100% interested in whatever it is that you have to say. They ask great questions and they contribute a ton of thoughtful insight, but they are tops when it comes to eliciting your own thoughts and feelings because they're just that interested. It's so great. While we were all at school, they had a kid pretty quickly into their marriage, and so they were pretty limited in what kinds of things they could do. However, I made a point to just drop in on them every week or so and it was never hard to feel close to them. The same has been true with Dave and Caitlin, and Greg and Laura are a lot more accessible than I thought they would be. I bring this up because next week I get to see Laura, Matt, and Chase and all it took was saying that I would come up and visit them on their home field.

This is something common to a lot of friendships, married or otherwise. Great friendships tend to fizzle, or just fail to develop because one party is looking for a return on investment (usually in the form of immediate reciprocation) when the return should really only be evaluated over the long term, not the short term. I guess it's natural to look for a corresponding amount of reciprocation, but it just seems like if we're always waiting for that, then we'll miss out on some great people.

To put it another way, the last girl I dated was so great with how she approached her friendships. She totally knew and understood that if she didn't make an effort, then some of her relationships would become dilapidated. For her, it was more about her giving than receiving, if that makes it a little more clear. She also approached it liked everything depended on her, and I think it's a credit to her and her ability to develop personal and abiding relationships with people. Just thinking aloud...

An old friend from school has been back in contact recently and she's been checking out the blog. She really only knew me during my freshman year, and as most of you know, I was much more reserved then. I'm still pretty reserved as it is, but for some reason my blogger personna is very interested in vocalizing every dumb thought that crosses my mind. And the other night I got a call from a friend that's a recruiter because a TV show producer was looking for a male recruiter that was smart, honest, and pretty witty, so she gave him my name. I couldn't help out because I'm not up in LA, but all this got me thinking a lot more about the impression of myself that I project to other people. My biggest curiosity with that is the variation from person to person. Brenna from freshman year is going to have a much different impression of me than Farrah from Huntington Beach. I guess it depends on the context in which you know people. Too often we don't give each other enough credit to how much depth there really is to one another. That's why I think that most people (not all) are dumb who end up getting married so quickly after the first contact. That's another post for another day.