I’ve been thinking a lot about clutter. I hate it. My office is cluttered and I try to maintain that clutter as best as I can but sometimes, it overwhelms me and I gut the office or as I like to call it “weed the garden.” I weed the garden of my life a lot. Mostly, I weed the garden of people in my life a lot.
There’s a character named Michael aka Mouse in Armistead Maupin’s brilliant and funny novel Tales of the City (which made me want to move to San Francisco, become a hippie artist, and experience life to the fullest) and he says to another character, “I don’t need more friends than I can count on one hand.”
That line has always stuck with me. I know people who have a rolodex of friends that are trusted and close friends. I find that exhausting and to keep up with more than 5 to 10 friends makes my head spin. I have exactly that. 5 to 10 friends that I would move mountains for. There are friends who I once thought the world of and have come to realize they weren’t the people I thought they were and that while in my friendship garden they were good for me but now as they have become weeds, they might need to be pulled. I know it seems harsh “weeding” people from ones life, but I’ve learned that it is often for the best. Sometimes the “weeded” friend comes back not as a weed but as a potential friendship that is better than before.
It’s like that old saying goes, “People always come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”
The ones I have weeded from the friendship garden are reason/season friends.
But my lifetime friends, I hold near and dear. I’m loyal to them (probably to a fault) but like I said before, I’d move mountains for them.
So as I weed out my RSS feeds of blogs I no longer bother reading, magazines that are collecting dust, and friendships that hurt more than they help, I know it’s not because I don’t care but because I’ve grown and moved on.
Lately, my circle of friends have expanded to new people while losing some old friends and it’s been a weird breath of fresh air. The new aren’t replacing old, they’re just different. Their energies, their lust for life, their hunger for life are different. It’s re-energized myself, made me hungrier, and made me lust for life.
As my friend, Krissie said in her blog “My friends get me” and as my other friend, Amy said in her blog, “Together, we were a pretty successful night” (which refers to our Pink Elephant Parties) and that sums up to me what a real friendship should be. Your friends should get you and together you should be successful and learn things from each other. Inspire and awe. They are two people that do that for me. And if you’re asking, are Krissie and Amy two of my 5 to 10 lifetime friends, the answer is HELL YEAH. Friends like those don’t come a dime a dozen and friends like those should be held close enough to share a martini or a glass of wine with.
Listening to “Forever My Friend” by Ray Lamontagne
Yes, it was actually playing when I typed the above. Funny how life works.
