Making & Keeping Friends

Making my friends as a kid is easy. They are the neighbors that you play with. The girls in your dance class. The people that sit next to you in class. College brings a whole new group of friends. Some are paid for.. Some are random roommates.. Some are in your study groups.. Some you just party with. As we get older, making new friends gets harder each year. I'm not saying that my old friends are not satisfying enough (because that is simply not the case! I love my friends but the majority of them live far away). When you hit your mid-twenties, where do you meet new people you actually want to hang out with? Maybe a gym class. Until one of you switches gyms or quits all together. Maybe church. But it is unlikely you will be in the same place in life. So that leaves one place. Work.

I have met many people I consider good friends at work. 8 years ago (8 years! That is crazy!) I worked with some of the best people I have ever known. We would go out for drinks weekly, text all the time, spend more time in each other's cubicles than our own at times and it was wonderful. Then I quit to go back to school, another friend moved out of state, another transferred to a different city.. So the story goes, distance separated us. When we get together it's just like old times. But those are few and far between. The job I just left in July, I had 2 very close friends. One I began drifting apart from prior to leaving as our relationships had changed. The second one that I would remain strong is dwindling as well. My new job I have met some awesome people. My best friend at work now lives 2 hours away. We talk basically all day as we teach the same thing and plan together. When we leave at the end of the year, I see another good friend becoming a distant memory. Why does this happen? Why are our friendships based on seeing each other on a daily basis? How do you meet good, real friends that you don't work with?

I think it becomes even more difficult when you are married. Single people think you're boring because you don't want to go to a bar at 10pm on a Tuesday. (Which, never in my life have I wanted to go out at 10:00 on a Tuesday). You also lose all hope of making a friend of the opposite sex. Unless they are gay. Either the guy is secretly trying to sleep with you or your husband not-so-secretly wants to kill him.

What about couple friends? Don't even get me started. Either I don't get along with the wife or my husband doesn't get along with the other husband. It takes too much energy to play Fake Jen all night or deal with Pissed Off Husband.

Articles say things like "do what you enjoy!" And "be yourself" and "think out of the box!" I have enough to think about on a daily basis. I don't want to think about what I can do to better myself to meet a new friend that most likely will not stay in my life long.

So where do you meet friends after 30?

Benefit of Working Out

For the last 6 weeks I have been on a new fitness journey. Not because I need to lose weight (although a few pounds wouldn't be a bad thing) but because I need to improve my heart. I have tried the gym many times and sometimes enjoy it; but for the most part I hate it. It's a chore to go. Especially now that I work until 4:30 it is way too crowded for me. The reason I'm trying to improve my heart is because last summer I got some not very good Echo results. My EFwas 22%. Normal people have EFs of 55-60%. Mine has been low (in the 30s since my stroke 5 years ago. But never this low. I have been working out but in January I decided to make it my New Years resolution to fix my heart. This is the only factor I really have control over since I don't eat unhealthy and have a low blood pressure.




The first week of January I started not one, but 2 Beachbody workout plans. I combined them together and have been pretty successful in sticking to the plan (I have skipped a couple Saturday's but have generally made them up during the following week). I don't have a coach, nor do I want one. I accomplish things better on my own as I am hardest on myself.





So I have been doing both Piyo and Cize. I had heard many good things about Piyo. I do enjoy it. Most days. Drench is incredibly too long and Sweat appears on the schedule way too much. I have seen results though. My legs are sculpted along with my back. The exercises do get easier the more you do them. But I won't lie, I'm looking forward to finishing week 8 and moving on to something else for 2 months before I attempt this again!  Cize is one of Beachbody's newest workouts. I LOVE IT! It is all dance based. Hip hop at that. Dancing has never been work for me. It was my escape throughout high school. I look forward to the end of the day so I can do my Cize workout. Even the hour long routine is amazing. I'm sure it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but this girl is a huge fan. And who doesn't love Shaun T workouts?  I even have my mom hooked.



The best news I have received in a long while came from my last echo I had done at Shands the last week of January. I went to see if I qualified for a stem cell study on ischemic cardiomyopathy (what I have). It was disappointing to hear I don't qualify because my heart walls aren't thick enough. But my prayer was to either be given the stem cells if they would help my heart or not be chosen and my heart improve on its own. My EF was 38%!  It hasn't been at that percentage since prior to the stroke. It did improve once before and I only did one thing differently... Worked out 5-6 days a week. This is why I will continue my workouts and switch out programs every couple months.



What workouts do you enjoy?





With love-

Jen

Lent

Growing up Catholic, Lent was always a big deal.  As a kid, I sort of hated it though.  Not eating meat on Fridays and giving something up for 40 days.  That meant no chicken nuggets and often no candy.  What kid enjoys that?  Every Friday we would have fish at my grandparents house and many people would go out to eat.  Signs would advertise "Fish Friday!" all around town.  Lent would come to a close with a creepy play at church on Good Friday.  I remember the smell of incense (which I still hate to this day) and of course Jesus rising from the dead.  As I got older, I understood the meaning of Lent more each year.  It is no longer 40 days of lack of good food ending with a terrifying ordeal.

When we began attending a non-denominational church in high school, they still had Ash Wednesday services and celebrated Lent.  It was nice to keep the tradition of a Catholic church during holidays.  After attending another church the past 6 years, I finally convinced the husband to give this non-denominational church a try.  And boy! Did it take some convincing!  But now we both love it.  I asked him a few days ago what he was giving up for Lent.  He looked at me like I was out of my mind.  Guess you can't take the boy out of a Presbyterian mindset!  In years past, I have given up soda, coffee, alcohol, fried foods, carbs.. but on Easter the thing I gave up was all I wanted.  So this year I am doing things a little different.  Instead of giving something up, I am adding something to my days.

I have completed a few bible studies from Good Morning Girls and love the organization of them.  I need something to write and reflect on to get anything out of it.  For example, even in school I wrote everything in order to remember it.  The husband finds this tedious and unnecessary so we can't agree on a bible study, but it helps me.

Right now I am on Songs of Songs.

What bible studies do you enjoy?