Over the years I’ve had a lot of friends. I’ve lived in four different towns and in each acquired the best of friends, people with whom I would spend pretty most of my spare time with, discussing life the universe and everything or just playing or listening to music with.

Today though, I find myself in a town where I’ve lived for going on a year and a half, and I can count the friends I saw last year on one hand, and the number of times I saw them on no more than two. I have become a social recluse, a situation I have paid lip service to resolving many times.

So, in stark contrast to me having no friends, I look at my facebook roster and it tells a different story. I have, what is it, 50 – 100 friends say. With that many friends what’s my problem? Why do I feel lonely?

I’ve been putting some thought to this over the last few weeks.

So what is it? I reckon that the problem is that I am in fact a recluse. When I’ve had good friends, they have usually been small in number, and we have had fairly intense relationships. Lots of talking, lots of reflecting, lots of insight (or ‘upsight’ as Neil Stephenson would call it [1]). I’ve never had loads of friends, or been a complete socialite, but have focussed most of attention of a small group, one or two people who mean the world to me. So, when I’ve moved away there hasn’t been the bandwidth available for such maintained introspection, and we have drifted apart. I naturally focus my attention inside, on intellectual pursuits [2]. It’s a different world there, and time passes, and my friends aren’t around so I don’t notice that they’re not there, at least not whilst I’m working and thinking. And then, I look up and time has passed, and my friends moved on.

So there’s the answer to my problem. The reason I have no friends is that I’ve not maintained any friendships. I’ve left all my good friends behind, and I don’t have the time to burn [3] that I used to have to spend time to pursue a friendship with any of the random people I must have met in my day to day activities over this last year.

So, what about this facebook thing then? It’s a funny thing. I’d call it a phenomena. In the last two weeks I’ve been ‘friend requested’ by three of my best friends of all time, from my first two lives. These are people that I sadly lost a long long time ago, people with whom I would have gladly spend all my time with. And here they are again, 20 – 25 year later in one case. Oh how I’ve changed over that time, and I guess oh how I’ve stayed the same! What of them? No idea, a quarter century is a long time to catch up. And, the same problem persists. They are still where they were, not local to me, not easy to catch up with. It would be easy for me to let that drift, like I did last time. I could quite easily do it. When I moved to London last year from Brighton I left a good friend behind, and I’ve hardly seen him in that time, despite him being my best friend, and missing me too. Uh-ho it’s happening again.

Except this time there is email, instant messenger, skype video. T here are free mobile phone minutes, and phone text messages. There is facebook. Many many opportunities for me to reconnect. I’d like to do that.

So here I am on the train again, the daily commute in the dark to a far city. Me and my laptop and my coffee. And, this time, all of my friends are with me if I care to engage with them. I hope that they care to engage back.

[1] “Anathem” by Neil Stephenson – very much recommended.
[2] “Joe’s quest to change the world”, coming to a blog near you soon I hope.
[3] Daily commute from London to Cambridge, nightly routine with small child, then over tired and too little energy to do anything.