friendship, interrupted

I was reading an article from Double X by Emily Bazelon about how the recession is wrecking friendships…

Because of the downturn, friendships between two people whose Saturday night spending and overall class status used to calibrate precisely have now turned into trickier relationships between one person who still has money and one person who doesn’t.The rifts between friends created by the recession are a kind of collateral damage.

While I don’t 100% identify with the article, it did make me think of how some of my friendships have changed since my situation has changed. I won’t blame the economy for not staying in touch with friends but I know that since things have been shaky with me on the job front, I’ve intentionally let some friendships slide to the back burner.

You would think that in times of stress, frustration, despair and worry (all feelings one might have when unemployed or otherwise disillusioned), you would surround yourself with people you care about. People who care about you too. You’d want to spend all your time with your pals who can help lift you up, make you laugh and remind you of all the good things in life. Eh, it’s exactly the opposite. While I miss hanging out with my friends and talking to them on the phone or online, I’d just rather not bother. I don’t want to be reminded of the good times because frankly, it just reminds me of the life I used to have. So, I’ve been avoiding folks.

Update 5/9

Grades are in and I didn’t do as poorly as I had thought possible. That’s pretty much always the case, but I guess it’s best sometimes to expect the worst so that you’re pleasantly surprised in the end. That International Dispute Resolution exam was the one I worried about the most and I ended up getting a B! That’s pretty amazing considering that I had lost all my  notes prior to the exam, I had the time wrong and ended up with 30 min less than everyone else to take the test and I never got around to finishing or fixing the first answer that I knew had mistakes in it. The only explanation for my grade is that everyone else in the class did a pretty lackluster job on the test, fixing the curve in my favor. Thanks guys!!

So what am I doing now? As I said last entry, I’m back in the USA. For the past week I’ve been hopping around 3 cities staying wherever while I try and land a job. I have a hard time understanding how people are content with having nothing to do all day (unless they live in paradise). Now that I have no classes to wake up for and no job to run out to and no money to spend on anything I’m pretty much just reading and job searching and sleeping… a lot. It’s borderline trifling because I’m all out of my “i’m jetlagged” excuses. I know, this is so not bourgie but trust, I can remain pretty bourg in my poverty and desolation. LOL.

I’m kind of excited tomorrow though because my mom is coming over and cooking. I will put my mom’s cooking up against any of yall’s. Seeing as I haven’t had her cooking in ages, I’m pretty hype. I’m not even gonna be shy. I’m gonna have multiple helpings. It’s pretty good that I don’t visit home that much, or else I’d probably be fat. I’m not really sure how long I’ll be here. My family tends to grate on my nerves pretty easily. To be honest, I’m considering going back to Japan and taking the NY bar over there in the winter. Tickets aren’t so bad right now but I’d still have to tap dance with bottle caps stuck into my chucks to raise the funds :/

That’s it for now. I’ll just catch up on television I missed out on while in TKY.