Something I’ve been noodling on lately is relationships.

Over time, relationships (both personal and professional)… drift. Not because anything dramatic happens. Just life. Work gets busy. People move. Lifeeee.

I’m an introvert. I don’t hate talking on the phone, but it makes me anxious. And what I’ve noticed is that once close relationships can quietly fade. Then years later, when I think about reaching out, there’s friction. Thoughts like:

What do I even say?

Is it awkward now?

Why haven’t I kept in touch?

It’s not that I don’t care. Life just fills up.

Social media doesn’t really solve this. LinkedIn feels loud. Instagram is passive. A like isn’t connection. A story view isn’t maintenance.

And yet I believe relationships compound. People say your network is your net worth, but most of us don’t actually have a system for maintaining our network. We rely on memory. We rely on guilt. We rely on random bursts of motivation.

That works for a while. Until it doesn’t.

In a hard season recently, I realized I have over two thousand contacts in my phone. But I don’t have two thousand strong relationships. A lot of those connections had simply cooled over time. Not broken. Not dramatic. Just dormant.

Made me wonder… how do folks stay meaningfully connected to people when life is full and attention is fragmented? How do people make it easier to be the person who shows up consistently?

Don’t have a polished answer yet. still noodling.

More soon.