A year ago in December, I published a blog post titled The Definition of Friendship Changes Far Too Quickly.

In that post, one of the main paragraphs was “The older I get, the more frustrating I find it to maintain friendships. Everybody is busy with work, romantic relationships, hobbies, kids, and so many other endless responsibilities. It’s never going to end, and only ever continues to be a barrier between what our friendships used to be, and what they are now.”

I have been pondering this topic and trying to figure out how to change my life to include friendship more and more throughout the future. After a lot of thought, I have come up with two ways in which I can be a better friend and stay connected with those I know and love.

1. Windshield Time.
   
   I commute an hour each way to work and back every day. The morning might be a little early for most people, but the drive home would be a great time to dial someone up randomly and use bluetooth to talk on the drive home. My idea for this is to have a special list of contacts on my phone of people who know that I am doing this, and want to be called, rather than just being completely intrusive. Although, I may sometimes call a random contact that doesn’t know about this goal anyway just to see what happens.
   
   I will count how many people are on the list and enter that number range into a random number generator online and see which number is going to be the lucky person chosen to dial up. Once connected, if the person is free, great! You have me for an entire hour. Feel free to tell me all about what’s going on in your life lately. If you only have 5 minutes, that’s okay too. Maybe we can encourage each other and carry on throughout our day.
   
   I have no idea how successful this endeavour is going to be but I would ideally love to do this once a week and hopefully make some good conversations occur. If you’d like to be on the list for a potential phone call, send me a private message and I’ll make sure to get your number and add you!
   
   
2. Monthly Open House!
   
   When I came up with this idea, I thought it was going to be a little further in the future, but it’s going to be happening much sooner than expected! Andrea and I recently purchased a home, and that means that on a certain day of the month, every month, we will be hosting an open house!
   
   Each month we will schedule something and post the event on Facebook, and spread the word to everyone we know. We want this to be an ongoing monthly event that brings all our friends to us. Basically, we will make our home available for everyone we know on that day, sometime in the evening and if you can come by for a visit, please do!
   
   Can you come for 10 minutes just to say hi? Do that.
   Can you stay for 3 hours? Even better!
   Need a time killer between events? Come on over.
   Bored or lonely? Get your butt over here.
   Have a friend with you and need something to do? Bring them over and introduce us!
   
   We will be making our monthly open house a priority and will announce when it will be starting. We want to always stay connected with our friends and loved ones, and this monthly event could be a great way of doing just that. If you can make it, that’s great! If not, maybe next month!

I am really excited about what this next year is going to be like in terms of growing and maintaining friendships. Andrea and I are ready to embrace the future and want everyone to be a part of it. We love people, and our life is so much better with you in it. Please let me know if you’re as excited as we are, or if you’d like to get random phone calls from me on my drive home!