Making Time to Check-in With Friends as Self Care

I decided to start scheduling time on Friday evenings to chat with a friend. Either on the phone or zoom, it is a nice way to end the week and I don’t usually have any plans outside of the house. Many of my friends live a great distance from me and it is a good way to stay in contact and up to date. Since I started working from home a few months ago, I have more energy to spend on personal relationships and checking in with people I care about.

When I worked in education, most of my time and energy was spent on my relationships with my students, I loved it, but it was one of the many reasons I wanted to change careers. I had been neglecting to spend energy on my personal relationships and slowly, they faded away. It happens when we don’t continually communicate. Communication is so important to all relationships. I realized, in the five years I worked in education, I had not made a friend, but I’d lost touch with many people.

So I wanted to start something where I regularly check in with people and Friday nights seemed to be the best time. I don’t usually have anything else going on and neither do other people my age. I am in my 30’s and seems like my peer group is starting to spend more time doing hobbies, raising their family, and taking care of their home, more than going out in the evening.

I have many friends in my online writing community! We interact and “met” on Twitter and every once in a while have a group zoom and talk about writing and publishing. We often share similar interests in TV shows, books, movies, and video games, so it is fun to talk about those things, too. One of the good things about the internet is easily finding other people with similar interests. Though I’ve been privileged to meet many nice friends in my life, not many of them share all the nerdy interests that I do. It is OK, we support each other’s interests even if we don’t join in. But, it is nice to be able to chat about the things that excite me with others that feel the same!

I posted on Twitter that I want to make Friday nights available to chat with friends. A mutual replied that it sounded like a great way to do self care! I did not think about it as self care before and it is true. Checking in with friends is a form of self care. In the past, I even reflected on that in my journal and I have seen it in posts on the internet about self care. If it feels good, it is probably self care! So far, having a friend day Friday has been fun and I look forward to more chats with friends. I hope you make some time to connect with people who make you laugh and smile very soon 🙂