Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Are you satisfied with your social life?

This is something I think about a lot. Am I satisfied with my social life? Yes and no.

Most of the time, I wish i had more of a social life. More specifically, I wish that I had a circle of friends like I did when I was in my 20s.

But is it really normal for a father in his 50s to have much of a social life? My dad didn’t. I mean, he had his work friends. He had a couple army buddies he would see from time to time. But I always felt like he was mostly relegated to talking to the neighbors.

There’s a great piece of monologue in the original Star Trek series episode “Amok Time“ when Spock says “having a thing is not so pleasing as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true“. I bring this quote up right now because I think that I would like to have more of a social life, at least in theory, but when I am socializing a bit more, it’s almost tiring.

Take right now, for instance. I’m talking to Veronica and more or less actively dating her. Betty and I haven’t spoken to Betty near a month now. I’m still talking to Title Writer right now. She’s made it clear that she has feelings for me and I’m really not interested in her at this point. She keeps pushing, but I’m trying real hard not to be mean about it. At the same time, I don’t wanna leave her on either. I think my love life can must be summed up by the old expression “be careful what you wish for, because you may get it”. I like the idea of having a few different options; having a few different people to talk to at the same time. But reality it is, it’s kind of a pain in the ass

What happened?

There have been times in my life where I had all original circle of friends that I could probably call somebody on any given night of the week and find something to do.

I’ll tell you what happened. I got older. We all got older. We got into relationships. We got into marriages. We started families. We got knee-deep into our careers and one day you wake up and realize it you’re going through this proverbial treadmill of work, family sleep; wash rinse repeat. This is to say. I thug about the challenges as a middle-aged man attempting to have a social life.

I got older, and I came to realize that more often than not , I crave downtime more than I crave an active social life

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

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• Teacher Armor and the Saturday Clearing
• The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
• Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
• Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)

The article “The Regression of a Middle-Aged Social Butterfly” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.