Next up on the social balance game...

I'm going to just come out and say it. I have too many friends. I'm not saying that to toot my own horn or to make myself sound popular. In fact, my packed social calendar is probably detrimental to my closest relationships. It's certainly detrimental to my (at many times non-existent) relationship with my own family.

I'm a social pack rat. I meet people. We become fast friends. I try my darndest to stay in touch with them. But because there are so many people I consider friends, my time outside of the office and theatre is constantly spent trying to spend time with these people. Catching up on old times. Attempting to forge new memories. I make a rotation of people I need to see before the end of the calendar year, and I probably get to 60% of the list. With each passing year, people fall off of my social radar simply because I have no time to invest in a relationship with them, and I feel defeated.

And then there's the Maestro. When we started dating 3.5 years ago, we thought we had a lot of mutual friends. We were only half right. We had a lot of mutual friends, but we had a lot of people in our lives who weren't in that middle section of the Venn diagram. So now all of the Maestro's close friends are my close friends and vice versa. At least the friends who made it through tree-shaking eliminations, that is. So I went from having a few high school friends, and a few more college friends, and music friends, and theatre friends, and musical theatre friends to having to add to that the Maestro's friends. And then we got couple friends and I almost wanted to kill myself. And now that I've stepped back from the ledge, I still find myself ridiculously overwhelmed trying to fit them all in. I might get shot or condemned or whatever for saying this, but I think that being super social can actually be just as lonely as having no friends at all.

This weekend past was the last free weekend before the madness of promotional performances, community outreach, tech rehearsals, and performances for me. It happened to fall in line with the last free weekend before the Maestro's ever-expanding concert season starts. We had plans to go to Kent Island on Friday to visit some friends who are building a new house. If you follow me on Twitter, you might remember on Friday the saga of the 7.5 mile Bay Bridge backup (try saying that three times fast) that caused us to stay in Baltimore instead. We did find a new watering hole that excites me and accidentally bumped into good friends. That little accident scratched them off the list of people to spend QT with before Christmas.

After a four-hour rehearsal on Saturday, I had an evening scheduled to the minute intending to scratch a few more names off the list. I went from a birthday crab feast to dinner with a whole bunch of girls. At said dinner, when I explained why I wasn't particularly hungry but happy to be there nonetheless, one of my dinner companions remarked on how it sounded like I was trying to do too much and say yes to too many people.

Oh friend. How wrong you are! I spend most of my day saying "no" to people I love and care about. I turn down more invitations and proposals than you'll ever know. And still, my heart breaks from this attrition of good quality friends and professional contacts. I guess if I quit theatre or quit my job I could keep up with people better. But then I'd be poor and angry and unfulfilled, and that wouldn't do anyone any good.

So for now, I'll keep on trucking through my list of people to see. I'll try to not accept any applications for new friends. Unless they're bloggy friends, that is. I'm all up for some more of those (hint, hint: De-lurk and say hello some time! It'll brighten my day, I promise you). And next up on the social balance game? Maybe seeing some of my family before Thanksgiving. There's wishful thinking for you.