The last time I had made friends was in graduate school. Pursuing rigorous academic excellence was never really for me but I hung in there with the doctoral program because of the lifestyle: having friends and having the time to hang out with them. Then came the emotional dislocation of having to make a living, then the hunger for more and more. I bulked up on professional success. At the top of my game I owned a This Old House in Fairfield County, Connecticut and a cottage at the Jersey Shore. I just assumed having friends was in the past.
Then, beginning last May, I started to make them again. Last count, I had two. F0r the first time since the early 1970s, I can be myself. Given that we're Baby Boomers and not Generation Y, we call each other on the phone, not text and leave messages on Facebook.
Last night, one of my two new friends called me. She told me her troubles (linguist Deborah Tannen identified that as a standard bonding experience among women). I told her some of mine. I wasn't going to do a dump share for fear of driving her away. Yeah, I never bought into the Oprah era of complete disclosure.
Then she confided that a major retailer was interested in the jewelry she was designing. Yes, we Baby Boomers are still succeeding big time. I confided that financial information powerhouse Motley Fool was posting my deconstructions on the value of sundry companies. I read her word for word my post on Talbots - which you can read here. Both of us had shopped there, as had the lion's share of Baby Boomer mid-level female professionals. Since the economic downturn, we prided ourselves on identifying the best consignment shops, the right day to hit the racks in them, and especially picking up used Talbots-label pants suits. Yeah, we were Hillary Clinton kind of conservative dressers.
How did I re-learn how to make friends? I returned to the artsy, anything-goes girl I had been before I chased success with all I had. It's funny. Along the way of that return to a self that didn't fly with the Establishment, my third career - as a content-provider in social media - took off.
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