Ode to My Friends

Okay, the one day, self-imposed moratorium on posting turned into eleven days. I actually wrote a post that was supposed to go up last week about my declining faith, but I decided I didn't feel like posting it just yet. I'm also postponing the geekery series at least another day. Instead I'm going to write about something I was thinking about this weekend.

Saturday was Mountain Day, my alma mater's version of homecoming. There's no football team at the college I attended, so there's no traditional homecoming wrapped around a home game during the football season. Still, Mountain Day is something that K and I have attended almost every day since our freshman years. Now, it's an excuse for us to drive back up to Rome and hang out with friends we don't get to see as much as we used to. It's important to me because these are people I grew closer to during college than any but maybe four people in high school. I even worked with many of these people for a couple of years after college.

Still, it's always a bit depressing when these rare weekends end. It's not necessarily because any of them have done or are doing more with their lives than I have. I can't really say that teaching and starting a family are a complete waste of my life, although I do have to admit that my friend Courtney makes me jealous. She's doing exactly what I wish I had done after school. She's finishing up her masters and starting her doctoral program in the fall. (Yes, Courtney, I really am jealous of your life.) But that's still not the reason that heading back home on Sunday was depressing. Instead it's the realization I was able to ignore until the time for departure: I won't get to see these people again for a while. I do have one of my closest friends from high school now living in the same town in the middle of nowhere in which I now reside, but he's about as proactive in social aspects as I have. We've been in the same place for like four months now and have only seen each other once. I have more contact with my buddy in Athens (about five hours away) than I do with Justin.

I'm not a hugely social person. I'm perfectly happy in most instances with not having many or any local friends. Still, I really miss my college friends and really hope that I don't end up like my parents where my college buddies are no longer a major part of my life. I get a bit homesick for northwest Georgia at times, especially when I visit. Most of my college friends are still there. It's also much closer to Courtney and Mickey in Knoxville, and my best friend since fifth or sixth grade Hank in Athens.

I'm not sure how long I'll be willing to stay where I am. I have aspirations to further my education. I'll probably never be satisfied with just having a bachelor's degree. I'm also not entirely happy teaching high school and I really would love to teach at the college level. Still, I'm not sure I'll ever get the regular face time with my best friends that I did for the nearly eight years I did after turning 18.