We’re Only as Much as Our Connections

We ate, we talked, we snuck desserts, and we walked up hills to look at New York City from across the Hudson. We talked about the things that just seem too big and too meaningful to discuss on a normal day or via calls or text messages. We were in the moment, together, taking it in for all it was worth.

Then we ran back to the parking garage through the warm rain of a summer storm. It was one of those evenings that came directly out of the stories we hold onto and retell year after year. It was the quintessence of a storybook summer night. It was the kind of night a writer will reanimate in fiction year after year when a story demands it.

It was a moment of flying high, but it was also incredibly grounding.

I’m the kind of person who spends a significant amount of time every day working.

It’s more than just my day job — it’s also all my labors of love. It’s the hours I spend writing, the days I spend crafting poetry, and the months I spent chipping away at novels. I do have practical financial goals that drive me to work hard, but I also have deeply rooted intrinsic goals that drive me to write and create.

Yet even with that wide variety of different goals, I come across a certain way. I look like another American workaholic in the city running around nonstop for reasons that are incomprehensible to a lot of other people.

If you see yourself in any of this, it’s important to take time to recenter every once in a while. If you’re a hard worker or a true workaholic, it’s important to step back from the day-to-day chaos and analyze how you’re allocating your time. You’ve got to ask yourself the question, no matter how uncomfortable it might be to question yourself.

Ask yourself: are you putting time into what really matters?

It’s important to have goals in life. It’s important to chase your aspirations and have a purpose.

I’m at the point of my life where it’s time to think about things like marriage and buying a house. These are exciting prospects for me. I do want these things for reasons beyond society telling me I want them. I dearly treasure my partner and I am rather eager to move away from the apartment where I got into my second hit-and-run car accident. These types of goals make it inevitable that I am thinking about money and things that seem like your typical markers of success.

If you’re in a similar boat, remember that it’s also important for you to evaluate your motivations. Every once in a while, you need to reevaluate how your day-to-day life is lining up with your motivations. It’s easy to get so caught up in external things like the rat race that you forget — yes, I’ll say the cliché — what matters the most.

You have to give time to the people in your life you care about the most.

It’s incredibly easy to lose sight of the importance of our connections. Friends, family—it can go by the wayside far too easily. Research shows that both men and women continue to make more friends until roughly the age of 25. After that, the numbers begin falling rapidly and continue to fall throughout the rest of a person’s life. I know from experience that since I’ve reached my mid-20s, it’s a lot harder for me to find time to really spend with my existing friends or find ways to forge new connections.

But that moment I described earlier? It was an evening with my dearest childhood best friend and fellow writer. We’ve been inseparable for the last 14 years — we’ve had some rough patches, as all the closest friends and sisters do, but we’ve always been able to work through them.

Life has changed so much since we met as children, but we’re still able to have beautiful moments enjoying each other’s company. We still walk together through summer storms, both literal ones like that night, and metaphorical ones.

Chase your goals, but don’t do it alone.

However, as delightful as that time together was, we put that trip off by over a month and kept needing to change the date. It was both of us; things with work, troubles with family, and every other logistical dilemma in between. Yet once we were together, as usual, it was like it hadn’t been months since we last saw each other.

You’ve got to stop, take a breath, and make sure that you’re being balanced about how you allocate your time. This isn’t always easy when you have a demanding job, but doing this unpleasant thought work can be incredibly helpful in recentering.

After all, what’s the point of spending all your time working if you don’t find a moment to spare to spend with the people you’re working hard to support?