Cultivating Friendships: 6 Insights and a (Friend) Cameo! EP 448

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:09
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:15
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long.

00:00:33
Speaker 1: Term career goals.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:41
Speaker 1: Welcome the best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: This episode is airing in early March of twenty twenty six. Sarah and I are sitting here together on the sofa in my office.

00:00:50
Speaker 1: Welcome Sarah, Well, thank you.

00:00:52
Speaker 3: I am very excited. This is a friendship episode being recorded live as friends, so it's perfectly appropriate.

00:00:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:00:58
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Sarah's up in Pennsylvania, as we mentioned in the last episode, for a combo family and skiing trip. I mean the skiing is less exciting here than in Big Sky, but we do have little, tiny mountains and you can ski down them, so you'll do a little bit of that.

00:01:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm super excited. I skied here growing up, so I feel like they'll be a nostalgic fact.

00:01:19
Speaker 2: You have memories of our little tiny mountains here. But we also just took a little field trip to a stationary store together.

00:01:26
Speaker 1: That was an experience.

00:01:27
Speaker 2: We drove to Doylestown, Pennsylvania to Department.

00:01:30
Speaker 3: Of note Yes, because someone had written to me, Maria, a listener of my podcast, about her sister's store, and I think I texted Laura like, I kind of want to make a pilgrimage there the next time we come, and we made it happen. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Got to meet the proprietor and talk about all things notebooks and pens and little tiny stickers and others such things that you sell in this kind of place. Yeah, this episode is going to be about cultivating friendships, which we know is so challenging for people during what we call the busy years, you know.

00:02:01
Speaker 2: When you have building your career, you have young kids. It is one of the topics we hear from people about most because you know, people figure out like how to make time for their jobs, they figure out how to see their kids obviously because they're in the same house, maybe even exercise sometimes, but friendships require coordinating with other busy people, plus finding time.

00:02:21
Speaker 1: So it's like this.

00:02:22
Speaker 2: Added layer of difficulty that makes it even more challenging but not impossible, which is what this episode is about.

00:02:30
Speaker 3: And I also feel like it's one of the more rewarding aspects of adult life, and so that's why I think it's great that we're devoting a whole episode to it. It's like some effort goes such a long way in terms of fulfillment and happiness. So yeah, I'm super excited we're talking about it.

00:02:44
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:02:44
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So the basic framework of this episode, we're going to share six insights about cultivating friendships, just sort of talk about our thoughts on them, and.

00:02:52
Speaker 1: Then we may possibly have a cameo from.

00:02:55
Speaker 2: Another friend at the end of this episode, so stay tuned for that. So the first insight is that friendships actually don't have to take that much time. I mean, it's awesome if you have a lot of time or have a situation where you can be devoting a lot of time to it.

00:03:11
Speaker 1: But I always thought it was funny.

00:03:12
Speaker 2: I had this sort of like entrepreneurs dilemma, like work, family, friendship, health, sleep, choose two or something. It's like, Okay, these do not all take the same amount of time, right, Like most people are not spending forty hours a week with their friends. I mean, you're not spending fifty six hours a week on your health. How they're the sleep, you know. It's just like these are not the same sort of things. Like probably if you aimed for like four to eight hours a month, so one to two hours a week of friend time, that would be a reasonable amount.

00:03:39
Speaker 1: To shoot for.

00:03:40
Speaker 2: I mean, what do you think you're at right now, Sarah.

00:03:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's such an interesting question. And by the way, that adage that you just mentioned, I hate that one among the things we hate there. Yeah, I guess I don't like to be told my limitations by others, Like I will show you that that is not really you're wrong. But I mean, some weeks are very low and then other weeks are higher. But maybe it average is out to a couple of hours a week. I also feel like friendship fits in the cracks a lot. I'll text friends throughout the day, during downtime or just when I think of them. I mean, today, when we saw the stationary store, they had a bunch of great Gatsby stuff. I had to text my book club, of which I have friends in there because we're reading The Great Gatsbye. So it's like the little things, but it's not like that took a lot of time. And then a few times a year. There's definitely some concentrated friendship time that we'll talk about later in the episode. And then I feel like maybe every other week or so I have sort of a friend dedicated outing on average. So yeah, it's not a few hours a week, not totally time consuming.

00:04:35
Speaker 1: What do you think?

00:04:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I would say it's probably a couple hours a week. And I think if you're feeling like this area of your life is sort of very lower, close to zero right now, aiming for something like one to two hours a week, four to eight hours a month will help you feel like this is more achievable, because if you think about it, that could be one two hour dinner plus two one hour runs with a friend, right or you go to a show with a friend and that's like four hours and that could be sort of your thing.

00:05:00
Speaker 1: For the month.

00:05:01
Speaker 2: I feel like, oh, I still have friendships in my life. I still am spending time with my friends. It's not going to be like your sorority in college. Ready together ten hours a day, like, that's probably not this time of life, but you.

00:05:10
Speaker 3: Know, a little bit goes a long way, definitely, Like I'm thinking about I don't know, we had a Super Bowl, pard you don't have friends came Like, that's four.

00:05:16
Speaker 1: Hours right there, right there.

00:05:17
Speaker 2: So if you did that once a month or so, you'd still be maintaining those relationships. The realization Number two is that it is okay to be the planner. Now, if you are listening to this show, the odds are good that you are just much better at planning and organizing things than other people. So it makes sense that in your friendships, you might be the one suggesting getting together and there may be some little voice in the back of your head being like, shouldn't this be equals? Shouldn't they be coming up with an equal number of things that they're suggesting to me And I'm saying, yes, let's go do that or whatever. But the problem with that is that if you wait for that, it might just not happen.

00:05:57
Speaker 1: So if you.

00:05:58
Speaker 2: Issue invitations and people keep saying yes, then don't second guess they want to hang out, Right, Sarah, you are often the planner.

00:06:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a listener of my afestlet Plans actually gave me a new term for this, which is a friend rearc, which is when you have a friend group and you just tend to be the one that brings everyone together.

00:06:16
Speaker 1: You're the connector, you're the mother. Hen Yeah, and it's okay to be the friend rearc.

00:06:19
Speaker 3: Like own it and I agree, Like if people don't like your efforts, then they'll stop saying yes. But often, I mean my college friends and I we like to get together usually every year and take a trip together. And that takes coordination and work, and I often feel like I've got like a little bit of a cattle prod and I'm like, okay, everyone who's got the dates? But then once it's done, everyone's so excited. And the truth is with six women with full lives and jobs and partners and kids like this does take some planning and someone's gonna have to drive the bus.

00:06:50
Speaker 2: Yes, someone has to drive the bus. Well, that was my realization of how your college friend group had managed to keep getting together for so many years, and like through the gone of you guys having children, which is often what sort of makes people do this less often is that they had a Sarah, so I don't get.

00:07:07
Speaker 3: All the credit, but I get at least some.

00:07:09
Speaker 1: You get at least some.

00:07:11
Speaker 2: So you could be the Sarah in your group and just say I'm going to organize it. I'm going to plan it. People have free will to say no if they don't want to. You can always invite slightly more people than you think will actually be able to come, so you still have a good group of people if you want to do things in groups, but you can be the one organizing it. With that, you could be systematic about reaching out. I know a lot of listeners of this show do a weekly planning routine. That would be a really good time to look at your calendar for the upcoming week or two and say, oh, what am I doing with friends? Do I want to text somebody to get together? Do I want to see if people are around if I'm doing something they like to join me for it, And possibly even get people on a sort of regular cadence where you're seeing them whatever it makes sense for you. Once a month, once every two weeks, once a week. Different people works different ways.

00:07:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've made the month kind of a lot of my social calendar planning. Lately, I figured out that works best for things like date nights. And I haven't specifically built in friend time in that, but I feel like it would make the same sense because the month is enough time that there's not like so much uncertainty about what's coming up, but it's enough time to plan ahead for things, maybe a couple weeks out, so that can be a nice time frames.

00:08:17
Speaker 4: We'll come.

00:08:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, So if you plan in months that said time, then you can book babysitters and things like that if you need it. Or we're going to take a quick ad break, and then we'll be back with more about cultivating friendships.

00:08:39
Speaker 3: All right, we are back, and we've been talking about cultivating friendships. And realization number three is that busy people are easier to kneel down if you're doing something productive together, such as going to a workout class or taking a walk or running or maybe recording a podcast.

00:08:55
Speaker 2: That's right, we are seeing each other because we are recording a podcast together. Not everone's going to do that, but having some sort of project that you do with a friend, like if the two of you always go to gardening stores together, or you are singing in a choir together, or you're playing in a handbell choir together or running every other.

00:09:12
Speaker 1: Week or something like that.

00:09:14
Speaker 2: A lot of busy people want to multitask their friendship time, and that's great, Like, as you become better friends over time, you can put it more into just hanging out to hang out. But especially as you're just getting to know someone, thinking of a person as this is a person I do X with can help it feel like the friendship has more legs and is going somewhere. This was a great tip from Anna Goldfarb and her book Modern Friendship. So she says to people saying I want more friends, It's like, no, you want more friends to do X. You want more people to go to classical music concerts with you, You want more people to walk with. You want more people who like to do brunches on weekends, or you like more people who will hang out at the park with you and your kids.

00:09:58
Speaker 1: But figure out what that.

00:09:59
Speaker 2: Is and then you're looking for people that you can invite to do those things.

00:10:03
Speaker 3: I am so into the walk and talk, especially because while I love running. I'm gonna also just mention that if you run and you're one of those people who's like, I'm worried about running with other people because I'm self conscious, like you should just try it, because I mean, I cannot do it anymore, but it is such a wonderful way to get that outside time. I don't know, the endorphins help, the conversation flows like running friends are amazing, So take advantage of that and try it. Don't be scared if you do run. And if you don't run, or if you walk or you want to spend time walking calling a friend on the phone, you almost feel like you're next to each other, and it's just such a wonderful way to stay connected. And then also if you're trying to check off getting in a little bit of exercise or getting outside, you're like doing something productive at the same time.

00:10:44
Speaker 2: So and it might not matter if your friend runs very different pace than you. I mean maybe if they're like an Olympic sprinter and you are just starting out.

00:10:51
Speaker 1: It might be more problematic.

00:10:53
Speaker 2: But a lot of times people who are faster runners do need to do some slower runs, and then you know, your fast run could be their slow run.

00:11:00
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.

00:11:00
Speaker 3: I used to run with a woman who runs like at half marathons at six minute pace, and I never did that, and it was fine. It was great, but sometimes I did kind of have to let her talk.

00:11:09
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm not talking because I can't right now?

00:11:12
Speaker 2: That was okay.

00:11:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:11:13
Speaker 2: So a realization number four here is that for people who are really in the thick of it, spending time together might be more likely if you don't take time away from their kids. So, especially if you are in a more flexible phase of life and you have a friend who has really little kids or something like that, you can go to them and kind of try to work on their schedule, and I think that could be really appreciated and make the friendship keep going in a way that it might not if you're always like, let's go get coffee together and she's like.

00:11:47
Speaker 1: I can't.

00:11:49
Speaker 4: Right.

00:11:50
Speaker 2: So if she is like solo parenting to toddlers, you could offer to go after kid bedtime to their house and bring takeout with you, or offer to go do some weekend activity with that person. Like if I was talking with somebody recently who went skiing with a friend who had young kids, and they was like a day trip skiing, and that person was very glad to have another adult with them, and so they spent time together because it was not something that was taking them away from the family.

00:12:22
Speaker 3: No, we have really good friends in Miami Beach and they have one kid, like we have Annabelle as like the older kid, and then they have kids exactly Cameron and Jenevie's age, and then they have a younger one. So for the past few years he's like four now so less so, but we have been coming to them a lot more for that exact reason, like, Okay, it's easier for us, and they're always looking to do stuff to have fun despite having a young childer at home, and it's been good now.

00:12:44
Speaker 2: Of course, if you have kids around the same age, trying to come up with something that you can all do together, like I mean, yes, you're both chasing three year olds around the bouncy.

00:12:53
Speaker 1: Place, but you are doing it together.

00:12:54
Speaker 2: I mean, it's still a way to spend time with friends. You have a couple of friends who've had kids with.

00:12:59
Speaker 1: The k percent.

00:13:00
Speaker 3: I mean, I actually feel like that is like one of the best ways to kind of get through those tougher years is to find partners and friends. And I mean I did so much solo parenting when the kids were little, so especially if I had other friends and also were doing solo parenting, it was always like, Okay, where are we going to beet that's the best?

00:13:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, or even if they weren't, like that was the time that they could take the kids and then their spouse might trade off with them at some other points, so it's like that was a plus to have time with them. Yeah, and I did a lot of park play dates, and especially when the kids are little, like you can kind of force them to play with the people that you want them to play with. Later on, they developed their own friendships totally. Yeah, So realization number five is getting into Sarah's thing with her friends, her college friends. You could try going big because if you have the funds and some flexibility and I know a lot of our listeners do, you can travel to go see friends, or travel with friends to do something like a weekend away together. And sometimes blocking off a big chunk of time time feels more doable than little chunks of time because you have to commit to it ahead of time, and it's like, Okay, it's either happening or it's not. If they say that's not happening, fine, But once it is, then everything starts sort of filling in and you make it happen, and.

00:14:13
Speaker 3: I feel like there's two. I mean, there's the trips with kids, because I'm just going to put a plug for like, when your kids are little and you're traveling, if you have friends in the same stage where your kids get along, that can be a really really fun way to go big together. And like we went on an Alaska cruise with friends. We had a blast, and I think we all had more fun than we would have kind of just wrangling our own kids and our kids playing together kind of took off some of the heat.

00:14:37
Speaker 1: So that's a way.

00:14:39
Speaker 3: And then, of course, also the go big in terms of like my college friend trips are just kind of saying yes when those random friend opportunities might come around.

00:14:47
Speaker 2: Which is why you just signed up to go to a different sort of college reunion kind of thing.

00:14:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I got this email and I'm sitting at work and it's like your a cappella groups having a reunion, and I thought, oh, that's it's so cute. But I can't do that because I don't know. Initially, I just felt like that was just so superfluous, but something made me not want to delete the email, and so I actually afforded two of my friends who were one.

00:15:11
Speaker 1: Class above me.

00:15:11
Speaker 3: So people have stayed in touch with very inter mentally, but I never get to see a reunions. And I was like, you guys aren't going to this, are you. And then one of them were back is like, actually we are. And I was like, oh, I kind of just want to do it. And then I realized I could actually make this happen, Like this was not totally out of the realm of reality, and it wasn't practical and it wasn't convenient. But Laura said that if you are trying to talk yourself out of something that you want to do because it is inconvenient, it's a sign you should probably just do it.

00:15:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have this rubric that's like Okay, if you get an opportunity and you start talking yourself out of it, that is often a sign that you're really excited about it and you want to do it, but it's like going to be logistically complicated, and so you know like, uh, well, I don't you know, Oh that would be so fun. I have all this stuff going on with the or I'd love to do that, but it's really busy at work. Or I'd have to call in a favor from a colleague or from my partner or whatever. But that's the time you really want to do it, and it's just a matter of logistics, and logistics are often solvable in one way or the other. But the thing you got to be wary of is those things where you're talking yourself into stuff, like you don't initially want to do it, and then you're like, oh, well it might be fun, or maybe I haven't done that in a while, it'd probably be okay.

00:16:26
Speaker 1: You know. That's the lack of initial and excitement is telling.

00:16:29
Speaker 2: By the time this errors will have taken a recent trip that kind of came about last minute, where it's like, founds out some friends would be in Boston, and of course my oldest child goes to school in Boston. I was like, well, I could make a trip and see all of them, and booked a trip for Boston and good times. You can make it happen if you want to. And yes, you may need to make some arrangements with the rest of your life, but often arrangements.

00:16:57
Speaker 1: Can be made.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: People may not love that you're having to make arrangements, but people can deal.

00:17:03
Speaker 3: I think your rubric is so interesting and I'm like, as you're saying that, thinking about some things coming up that I totally said yesterday, because I'm like, well, it's not going to be that annoying.

00:17:12
Speaker 1: It's not going to be that annoying. It's never a phrase you should be uttering.

00:17:17
Speaker 3: I'll survive.

00:17:20
Speaker 2: So yeah, we'll take one more quick ad break and then we'll be back with the rest of this episode.

00:17:24
Speaker 1: And a surprise and a surprise.

00:17:38
Speaker 2: Well, we are back talking cultivating friendships. So we've just been mentioning that sometimes it's better to try going big to travel with friends, or to go travel to see friends. If you have far flung friends, you know, getting on a plane takes effort, but there are some cheap airflares these days, and if you are staying with your friend, then it's probably not going to be that expensive a trip. It would probably be great to have that, and then the time together can be supplemented by texting through the rest of the year. That's how you keep in touch with your farflun friends.

00:18:08
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, we definitely text, but I will even say that sometimes you'll have an occasion to reconnect someone that you don't text with regularly. And I've always been so impressed at how you can just sort of pick up with somebody, especially if you shared a lot of time in the past. Like I've met up with high school friends that I hadn't texted with or seen for years, and yet the conversations are so so natural. So I say, just like, if you're wanting to do something like this, like, just go for it. You'll probably have way more fun and get more out of it than you think.

00:18:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then our last realization is that if you are feeling like you don't have a lot of close friends in your life, it's good to realize that you don't have to add a ton of new friends at a rapid clip to massively boost this. So if you're feeling like things are thin, like you're in a new community or some good friends of yours moved away, you can keep their perspective that turning two acquaintances per year into good friends means that in three years you would have half a dozen really good friends, and that is probably about as many as a lot of people can maintain at sort of a high level of regularly seeing each other, and acquaintance has become friends through repeated relaxed time together, so you know, you look around at the people in your life who seems friendly, See if you can start a conversation with them, start texting with them, see if there's something they want to do together, and see how it goes from there.

00:19:29
Speaker 3: Sounds a lot like dating Laura.

00:19:32
Speaker 2: There is an element of that, there is there is for sure. Well, so we are excited to be spending some relaxed time together tonight with our friend Kathleen Paley, who is coming over here to make a cameo.

00:19:45
Speaker 1: Well, Kathleen, welcome to best of both worlds.

00:19:47
Speaker 4: You two. I am so excited to be here. Thank you for the chance. It's in person, live sitting here. You're the miniatures.

00:19:56
Speaker 1: Yes, she is on my couch.

00:19:57
Speaker 2: All three of us, in fact, are on my couch leaning over the one microphone.

00:20:01
Speaker 1: We'll see how this works.

00:20:02
Speaker 2: Our sound games may not be that happy with us.

00:20:04
Speaker 3: At the end of all this, I felt like when I don't remember how this exactly came about, but when I heard that you were coming and that we could all hang out, I was like, oh my gosh, friend party, Like this is going to be amazing, And it is just like one of those things where it's like, you know, it's not like we text all the time or hang out all the time, but like, what a great seizing the opportunity for connection.

00:20:26
Speaker 4: I mean, if any group is going to seize the opportunity for connection, I feel like it's going to be you too.

00:20:30
Speaker 1: It is.

00:20:31
Speaker 2: It is absolutely so, Kathleen. I imagine maybe a few folks listening to this I don't know you, and they should you can talk a little bit about your Reframe podcast.

00:20:41
Speaker 4: Yes, so I have a podcast much new we're in younger than best of both worlds. So it's called the Reframe and it's sort of about reframing our relationships with time, money and stuff. And Laura was integral and helping me launch this thing. So eternal things to Laura. But yeah, we had arranged to have dinner together tonight, the three of us, and then Laura and Sarah said, Hey, would you be willing to talk a little bit about maintaining and building friendships through busy seasons of life? And I said, yeah, of course.

00:21:17
Speaker 2: Because Kathleen is now retired, a newly early retiree from her legal career. But you were billing all kinds of crazy hours back in the day.

00:21:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, I spent nearly twenty years really in the grind of things as a litigator in a big law firm, including lots of trials. So yes, many many hours, and that can make it challenging to maintain friendships while also being a good mom and wife and everything. So it's funny. I put together six points just like we did, and with no planning in advance and no coordination in advance, and about half of them have some element of overlap with what I've said. Yeah, yeah, I mean great minds are and my mind will coordinate hopefully with the great minds of the two of you, so I can run through them.

00:22:08
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, Okay.

00:22:09
Speaker 4: So first, I think it's really important to make it a goal. And that might sound like, oh, it's treating people as tasks, or it's cold, or it's calculating, but I don't think it is. I think when you make something a goal, particularly among the folks who listen to this podcast, or what it's saying is it's a priority. It actually it's not calculating and cold. It means that this is rising to the level where it's something that we think is really important. The second is kind of a little bit of an overlap with what you said, make it novel. You said we should have things to do together, have someone who you run together, or someone you know run with, et cetera. And I think we've all done a billion happy hours, We've all done a billion dinner parties, and those can be great. But sometimes with busy people, if you can have the hook of novelty, then it can make it something that you and your friends are really looking forward to. Like this year, I put together a list of about a dozen novel things I want to do with friends. So next Saturday, I'm going to a Korean spa with a girlfriend. I only recently learned that they're naked, so I'm gonna hide myself up.

00:23:16
Speaker 1: You guys are going to take your relationship to a new level intimacy.

00:23:20
Speaker 4: I love it. She was like, I'll bring the stretch marks, and I was like, so and so we're going a few friends. We're going to an eighties nineties dance club together nice and doing a high ropes course in Barbados in a few weeks. With wow, girlfriends like make it novel, and then everyone is excited. You would also said, be willing to be the initiator. And it's funny that is my third point, we're all busy, and some people just are not naturally prone to be the initiator, or they're so underwater that you, as the planner, can make that important. There's also I'll just add in a little additional hope to be the initiator. When you're the initiator, you actually get to drive the bus more. So you make sure it's something that you want to do. Also, if it's something just like hosting, it can actually be so much easier if you have a template for hosting. You're like, I get cheese and crackers and nuts and this novelty and a bunch of wine and just show up. If you have a template for hosting, being the host is actually so much easier than having to get yourself out to go somewhere. So being the initiator has like little side benefits. Also, you know, this is a podcast where folks are very thoughtful about time. I think be flexible on time. Treat it as the jigsaw puzzle. The walk and talks are part of that. I think. You know, if you're used to having a sad desk salad for lunch, say like no, I will be willing to get out and pop out for lunch with a friend or walk with a friend. Also, I know Sarah would not go for this because it's late at night. But I have often had friends over at like starting at nine o'clock because the kids are a embed at that point. And then everyone says they're going to leave by eleven. Oh friends, No they don't. One. Two. I mean something like that, Sarah.

00:25:09
Speaker 1: But Sarah'd be asleep on the couch. So I mean, when you.

00:25:12
Speaker 4: End up with more empty bottles of wine than people who were there, you know everyone had a good time. So be willing to sort of treat the time as a jigsaw puzzle to figure out. It doesn't have to be the standard things that you think. Two more points. I'll be very quick here. For those who travel for work, keep a mental list of where are your friends around the country.

00:25:32
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I mean I just feel like the opportunistic friend visit when you happen to be in a city. It's like always worth it.

00:25:38
Speaker 1: I always do it.

00:25:39
Speaker 4: Absolutely. Yeah. I am based in DC, but would have a lot of travel to San Francisco in LA. So I would just reach out to friends who are anywhere in the Bay Area or anywhere in like LA or Orange County, They're like, hey, you want to have dinner tonight? Otherwise it was going to be grub Hub in my hotel room. And so keeping those friendships alive from twenty twenty five years ago is great. Really. Relatedly, internet friends can actually become real friends. I'm sitting right.

00:26:04
Speaker 1: Here absolutely absolutely and not.

00:26:07
Speaker 4: Being afraid of that. You know, we all grew up being told don't talk to strangers on the Internet, and obviously there's wisdom to that to a degree, but in vetted, trusted spaces, internet friends can become real friends. And being willing to make that leap, I think can be so enriching. You can also before you even meet in person, can make that leap by starting to do something like Marco Polo. I don't know if you know Marco Polo, but it's like asynchronous voice notes and I have a friend we are meeting this next summer in person for a conference or camp, and we have never met in person before. We've been on each other's podcast and we trade our long Marco Polo's where I go on a walk and I just talk to her and then she sends me something back. So being willing to like embrace that kind of technology to help internet friends become real friends. And then the sixth is related to what you were talking about about having kind of a standing get together and again being the planner who does that. What I've done with some college girlfriends is we try to have a rotating annual get together, but we make it in one persons city, so one person each year doesn't have to travel and it makes it easier. Now, it was supposed to be in DC back in November, and one friend got too busy with work, so we're like, oops, I guess we better go to Barbados instead.

00:27:30
Speaker 1: I'm like, such a shame DC in November.

00:27:33
Speaker 4: I'll do Barbados in spring.

00:27:35
Speaker 1: Yeah that sounds good. But yeah, just.

00:27:37
Speaker 4: Having something that you say, this is a tradition, so we make it work, and then being again being the initiator, Yeah, who does the planning. Absolutely, that's what I have found hopeful over the last twenty ish years, to keep friendships alive and to make new ones as the new stages roll along.

00:27:55
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

00:27:56
Speaker 2: Well, that's great advice, all wonderful trip tips that people should try and make sure to listen to more of that.

00:28:03
Speaker 1: On the reframe, I just have.

00:28:05
Speaker 3: To say Kathleen's podcast is so fun and so interesting, especially I mean, I'm not like looking to retire early, but listening to somebody else's journey through that is fascinating and bonus if you're into any sort of travel hacking whatsoever. Kathleen is a goddess and has taught me everything else.

00:28:22
Speaker 2: Yes, Sarah Mayel, Sarah Bows, you booked tickets to Hawaii using points right, so there you go.

00:28:28
Speaker 1: Text Kathleen, I got a deal book? Are you proud of me?

00:28:32
Speaker 4: I love getting text from you being like, look at this, I've got a free hotel.

00:28:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:28:40
Speaker 2: So many things you can learn from the reframe, how to retire early, to go on fabulous trips, have wonderful friendships, and the like. So, as Kathleen knows, we end each episode with a love of the week, so I can go first, since it looks like the other two of you are still trying to think of yours.

00:28:59
Speaker 1: Got I hears Okay, I love Tapus, which we are about to go get.

00:29:04
Speaker 2: I'm going to drive these two ladies over to a Tapas restaurant, so that will be great.

00:29:09
Speaker 4: Well.

00:29:10
Speaker 3: I love internet friends because I mean I have a lot of in real I'm not only friends with Internet people, but some of my closest friends now are people I've met through my blog, my podcasts, et cetera. And that is amazing. Internet friends are great.

00:29:23
Speaker 4: Well, at the risk of sounding like a lush, I love cocktails and Laura made us cosmos before dinner, so I'm going to say thank you, Laura.

00:29:33
Speaker 1: You're welcome. You're welcome.

00:29:35
Speaker 2: I was just trying it out. See how it went delicious, I hope so well. This has been best of both worlds. We've been talking strategies for cultivating friendships, especially during the busy years. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:29:53
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:30:01
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.