One of the things I realize that I have really missed due to this pandemic are the people like acquaintances and more peripheral friends. I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping up with most of my really close friends through texts, online game nights, online book clubs, and online Bible study. There are a few good friends who are technologically adverse or just uninterested in spending even more time on technology after a long Zoom filled work week, which I haven’t stayed as much in touch with as I would have liked but overall I feel like I’ve done pretty good in that regard.

It’s all the other people that I realize I miss. You know the people that range from people you just see and say hi to because you know who each other are but you’re not really friends to the people you would consider friends but rarely see out of more sort of group events like parties or such. I miss the people that I talked to at church every week even though we don’t really have a relationship outside of that building. I miss chatting with my co-workers about non-work stuff like you would do in passing or while waiting for meetings to start. While we’re all sitting in Zoom waiting for a meeting to start we just sit there and stare at each other because there’s no way to have the sort of little side chats with the people sitting next to you. You have to start a conversation in front of a whole bunch of people. I miss those friends who I like to hang out with but who are not in my inner circle of friends and who outside of social media haven’t really kept up because there’s only so much time in the day and we’re all mentally drained anyway.

This is all kind of odd for me because I do have some low level of social anxiety and I detest small talk. I literally never know what to say to people I don’t know super well, so unless they are really good about guiding the conversation it’s going to be a whole lot of awkward. I even miss the people who are familiar to me because I see them all the time but that I don’t even know like the people I would see at the gym every day even though we never spoke to each other.

I can guarantee at some point I have probably turned and walked the other way or pretended I didn’t see you so that I didn’t have to stop and talk to you unless we are at a certain threshold of friendship. So to actively miss the people in my life that I would do that to is a little surprising. But I guess the good thing about all this is that it is teaching me that these people do serve an important role in my life and I should try and be more open and overcome that fear I have about engaging with them.