Goal 4

I'm one who really likes checklists.

It's so satisfying to get that wave of accomplishment from a finished task. Check check check. But building relationships is far from the ease of a checkbox. There's a lot more time, care, and attention that goes into it and you're never really done, there's no end point where you think "Oh, we're friends now!" It's not so clean cut and defined; you just have to let it sweep you off and enjoy the ride of an undetermined destination.

And there's some relationships (the best ones) where that's exactly how it plays out. Girl meets other human. Conversation ensues. Girl laughs, other human laughs, they share all of their similarities, matching humor quirks, and life goals & experiences. Soon enough, time has flown by and you don't even know where you are anymore, but it doesn't matter because hey, you had a good time.

Then there's the forced journeys, the ones that seem to drag on like a bad family road trip. Each statement is slightly off mark, a tad misinterpreted. The conversational dance is just barely out of sync and neither of you knows who is on the right beat anymore. To avoid ensuing awkwardness, both of you devolve into the boring small talk that has little chance of going wrong, and pretend you're enjoying knowing what classes they're taking and where they attended high school.

And because of my checklist personality, I get impatient with these lulls, these less than optimal interactions. I want to click with everyone instantly. I want 100 best friends in the same number of seconds. I want to skip the small talk and just be my real self for others and have them do the same. I want to know what makes people tick and what their dreams are and who they want to be ten years from now. 

The older I get, the less tolerant I think I am of superficial friendships. Freshman Connie was the social butterfly with hundreds of friends, and then some. Jaded Junior Connie is a different story. I'm a lot more selective with who I spend my time with and I've gotten too used to being surrounded by best friends who have already gone through the awkward early stages of friendship with me. For the past two years, I've become accustomed to the easy conversations and judgment free interactions that characterize long time friendships. So now, it's kind of like learning how to ride a bike again and retraining the long out-of-use small-talking, friend-making muscles to do what they once did so effortlessly. And if everything plays out, those muscles won't have to be in use for long, and I'll return to the comfort of lazy conversations of dreams and futures.

So here's to this adventure of unwritten checklists and exercising both body and mind.