Saturday, October 10th, 2026

We had a pretty social day yesterday. It was nice to have some new friends who are fellow travelers come by for lunch. It is hard enough to make friends when you are older, but when you travel a good bit, it is even more difficult to attempt to start or maintain relationships. The nice thing about meeting other people who tend to travel like we do is that they understand that we may not be in the same location for a long time. And when you do find a way to align schedules, it is special. People like this are more likely to meet you next in some remote section of Costa Rica than at one of our homes. It feels like it will be easier to maintain relationships with people like this than some of our traditional friendships.

I would admit that I have been a bit hesitant to try to build new friendships with people who don’t have similar lifestyles, given that I know it is going to be so difficult to try to keep up the friendship. It’s not something that I am currently willing to trade travel for. I’m hoping some of our friends will be able to join us while we are traveling. But we will see.

There is something about trying to keep up relationships anyways. It is funny how, given all the technology that we now have to stay in touch, we seem to stay in touch less and less. I was laughing the other day; I hadn’t heard from someone I was friends with years ago in a long time. He reached out, wanting to hear about living in Colorado. I gave him my updated contact information, and I told him to call or text anytime so we could catch up. And he replied that he would text next week to see when I was available. I’m not sure how, now that everyone has a phone in their pocket at all times, we seem less likely to just call someone. Sure, you might miss someone, or they may need to send your call to voicemail. But before everyone had cell phones, you would miss people all the time. Sure, it may take a while for schedules to line up to actually talk, but it seemed to happen. Maybe it seems that if you text, you are making a connection, even if it is pretty lightweight. And somehow the social contract to just reach out and make a phone call has shifted because we now have this less seemingly invasive form of interaction, text messaging, given the expectation that it is time-shifted.

Maybe it is that people feel like they are staying connected since they have the ability to see what people are up to on social media. Of course, that is just one very curated view of what is going on with that person’s life. It is not the vulnerable view you often get during in-person interactions with long-term friends. Everyone’s lives are perfect on social media; they had that great dinner, that amazing vacation spot. No one ever shares what is really going on at the level below all that. The topics that come up after a few drinks. But to line up that social situation, it takes someone to reach out. To make the call or text. To line up being in the same city. It doesn’t happen often. It is easier to fall back to the default day-to-day of your life.