This weekend, I watched Friends: The Reunion on Crave… and what a dose of nostalgia that was!

I remember watching Friends episodes here and there back when I was a kid because my mom loved the show. She told me that it was how she learned English when she first came to Canada as a refugee.

When I heard that Friends was going to be taken off Netflix in 2019, I decided to watch it from Season 1 through 10 while I was studying abroad in Singapore. On evenings when I was doing the dishes or working on projects, Friends was my companion in the living room.

It got me thinking about my own friendships and relationships…

In addition to my close group of cousins, I’ve met many great friends and had different kinds of friendships over the years. Sure, some of these people came and went at different points in my life, but it’s still nice to see that they’re doing well when I scroll through social media.

Throughout school, I’ve always had many different groups of friends with different interests. I loved meeting new people, and I also loved connecting people who I thought should meet each other too (Fun Fact: I am an aspiring matchmaker through a little ad-hoc project called KKINDER 🔥).

The caveat to having so many different friends and friend groups was that most of these relationships were more shallow. Yes, I would have awesome birthday parties with 60+ friends and family in attendance (see photo above), but it was hard to catch up with all of them outside of these big moments in time.

Over the years, I would find myself hanging out 3-4 times a week with different groups of friends each time. This made it hard for me to nurture my friendships because I was always “so busy”. For a year or two in university, my friends and family would have to give me “3 weeks notice” for hangouts, gatherings, and events. It sounds absurd, but it was because my schedule was so jam packed with plans that I found myself either declining invitations or running between 2-3 events in a single evening.

Although this “3 weeks notice” kept me and my calendar sane, it also became a huge blocker in my friendships! My friends no longer felt like they could call me up for spontaneous chill sessions, and so I drifted further and further away from some of them.

In hindsight, I am glad that I met and befriended so many interesting and incredible people over the years. However, I wish I gave more priority and attention to my closer friends and family instead of treating everyone the same. As a people pleaser, it’s hard for me to say “no”… But, I now realize that whenever I was saying “yes” to making new friends, I was (in a way) saying “no” to deepening my existing friendships.

So, what now?

Well… let’s just say that I am eternally grateful to my boyfriend, friends, and family who put up with me over the years and still stuck with me (y’all are the MVPs)!

After a year of COVID-19, I’m ready to reconnect and rekindle some of these friendships… but I’ll be a lot more mindful to nurture instead of network.

Quote of the Day

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

african proverb

Thanks for following my #100DayChallenge series… The goal is to blog everyday for 100 days in a row. Through this series, I hope to share more about my personal life to complement the career content that I usually create. I’ll also be exploring more aspects of creative writing!