I have many old friends. At 40 years old, I am very lucky to say that. Unfortunately, I don’t live near any of them. As a result, our reunions are infrequent and my time with them is rare. The great thing about old friends though, is that when you do see them, it’s as if no time has passed. There is a foundation that was formed long ago that can endure months or even years of little communication.

My problem is that I haven’t made any new friends in quite some time. This wasn’t intentional, but it was my own doing. I could blame it on a new city, or a new job, or the building of our young family, but that’s not accurate. I simply didn’t try. I didn’t try to make new friends despite countless opportunities to do so. It was easier not to. I’d become spoiled by my bedrock of old friends that required no maintenance. Whenever the time came to nurture new relationships, I always failed to act.

To be clear, I wanted new friends. I still want new friends, but selfishly, I want new friends only when I want them, and that’s not how friendships work. Making new friends as an adult requires effort. You have to create time in your busy schedule for a new person. It can be awkward and sometimes it doesn’t work out. It’s a lot like dating. And so, because I was busy, and because it was awkward, and because it often failed, I never put in the work. As a result, I didn’t make any new friends.

What I longed for was new, old friends. I wanted new relationships in my new city that required little work. I wanted the comfort and ease of an old friend, but didn’t care to put in the effort required to build new friendships. I wanted the benefit without doing the work, plain and simple.

This situation wasn’t unlike many other things I wanted. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be well read. I wanted to be a creative. But, those things don’t happen overnight. Those things take effort and time. They can be awkward and there is no guarantee they’ll lead to anything. It’s similar to dating.

Like anything of value, the work comes first. There is no certainty. You proceed with faith. You decide what you want, you put your head down, and you grind away at it. There is no magic shortcut. There is no easy way. There’s no such thing as new, old friends.