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Every two weeks, I share reflections and curated links on meaningful work, living intentionally, and other topics that interest me.

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Naming the Change

The group text has been lighting up again.

A group of high school classmates is getting together on Maine’s Midcoast next weekend. These are people I've known since we were sixteen, when Will Smith was still DJ Jazzy Jeff. The texts have that particular energy of a reunion still a few days off. Logistics, mostly. Who's driving, who's staying where, and who can make it for dinner on Friday night.

But underneath the logistics is something I've been thinking about all week.

Our class was small. None of these relationships looks the way they did back then.

Some of us drifted for years and reconnected as if no time had passed at all.

Some changed shape, closer once, steadier now, or the reverse.

A few I had to work to keep, because the easy version of staying in touch wasn't going to happen on its own.

That last kind is the hard one.

We tell ourselves the painful losses are the dramatic ones, but mostly relationships don't end. They thin out. Rarely does anyone decide anything. You just stop, slowly, and one day you realize it's been three years.

The friendships that lasted are the ones where, at some point, somebody named the change out loud instead of letting it drift. That conversation is harder than drifting. It's also the reason the friendship is still here.

I had a version of that conversation recently, but in a different context.

A friend called recently. He was feeling overwhelmed by too many commitments and was struggling to keep all of the balls in the air. Good problems, mostly, but too many at once, all pulling at the same hours.

Somewhere in the call, it stopped being about how to make it all work.

The question wasn't which things mattered. They all mattered. It was which ones mattered now. Some of what he loved would have to go quiet for a while. Not abandoned, but set down on purpose, to be picked up when there was room.

It took me a few days to hear the message myself.

So, I'd rather say it than let it drift.

I'm not going anywhere, but I won't be in your inbox every other Tuesday at eleven. I have other areas of my life that need more attention right now, and spreading it thin wasn't serving my other commitments or you.

What I won't do is quietly disappear. I’ve been at this for nearly four years. Your attention is the most generous thing you could have given me, and I'm not going to repay it by disappearing one Tuesday at a time.

This is me naming the change instead.

The relationships that last are the ones somebody bothers to tend. I intend to be here when there's something worth your time.

Until then, thank you.

And a Farewell Photo...