Now is the time.
Each of your friends has a different relationship to race and discrimination and otherness.
Know what that is.
Clarisse Meyer
Listen and learn from each other.
Ask questions from a place of allyship and answer them from a place of friendship.
If it feels vulnerable and uncomfortable, youre doing it right.
Money money money.
We spend more time actively ignoring socioeconomics than we do acknowledging it.
Know if your friends have specific boundaries or considerations.
Only then can you respect them.
Loneliness in times when we outwardly dont seem lonely at all.
Its possible to be lonely in a room full of people and a city full of things to do.
Its possible to be lonely in a family or friendship or community.
Loneliness does not stem from the lack of bodies and stimuli.
It stems from the lack of a sense of belonging.
Say it out loud to one friend who you love and trust.
Dive in and unpack it together.
Observe as it begins to ebb away.
Expectations (which are not only reserved for your partner).
Contrasted with dating and romantic relationships, friendship can feel wonderfully, refreshingly simple.
No big moment to define what you are and no need to discuss exclusivity.
This lack of structure and absence of commitment ritual makes it uncomfortable to discuss expectations.
Know that youre allowed to have them.
You should, in fact, have them.
Friendships are meaningful relationships into which we pour our time, our energy, ourselves.
Feedback and getting to that 2.0.
Working in a corporate office, or even a startup for that matter, gives feedback a bad reputation.
Its often awkward and poorly constructed and even worse delivered.
But the reason companies try so hard to build a culture of feedback is because thats how we grow.
Why is it that we rarely think to ask our friends for feedback?
Theyre people who know us better and differently than our colleagues.
Forget professional development here use them for personal development.
Name a thing youd like to get better at, and ask them to help you along the way.
Regrets that wed rather completely ignore and hide from.
The former makes it easily into conversations over brunch and on walks around the park.
But the latter is probably more worth examining.
The next time you find yourself sweeping a mistake under the rug, ask yourself why youre doing that.
Sexnot just the good and the bad but the ugly.
OK, friends do talk about sex.
But we tend to stay in the lane of light and fun and funny.
Relationships, marriages, and divorces are fraught with sex issues.
But theres no big secret.
It normalizes one coffee date, one cocktail hour at a time.
Evolution and friendships that needed to end… yesterday.
Unstructured beginnings can lead to unstructured endings, ripe with potential for chaos and drama.
Be the person who acknowledges your time and growth together.
Be the person who thanks if thanks are in order or apologizes if apologies are in order.
