Episode 47
The Longevity of Friendships
After watching a bit of a video from a YouTuber about friendships, it got me to thinking about my own friendships. Those that I still have (not many) versus the ones I once had.
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Transcript
[music]
Speaker:I believe this will be episode 47 of Call Me Donovan. I call it a little bit
Speaker:of a pod... not really a podcast. You know, we're starting to get this little
Speaker:blending between podcast versus YouTube videos and, you know, as an old-school
Speaker:podcaster myself, as I've mentioned before, I started in 2011. I'm not the
Speaker:oldest of anybody that's actually podcasted in their life. That's
Speaker:for sure, but for the longest time, I mean, a podcast was an audio-only thing. Now,
Speaker:even back in the early days, you would stream the video of you recording
Speaker:the podcast live, and you may have a video version of the podcast, but a
Speaker:podcast was always synonymous with an audio file that was accessed via an RSS
Speaker:feed, and that you would either maybe get it on the website, maybe it was embedded
Speaker:on the website of the podcast, or you use a podcatcher software like Pocketcast
Speaker:or Overcast or Down... Downcast or Downcaster? I forget. Is that even around?
Speaker:Apple Podcast, etc. But now, I mean, YouTube itself actually has a section like this
Speaker:podcast, Call Me Donovan, the audio version automatically gets synced into my
Speaker:YouTube page. So, yeah, it's a little redundant if I do like a video version
Speaker:like I'm actually doing right now and recording a video version of it. So you
Speaker:wind up with an audio version that shows up if you go to YouTube and click on the...
Speaker:I don't know. It does... It gets... It gets a little confusing. So, got off on topic
Speaker:again, as usual. But I was watching a YouTube video yesterday, and I need to go
Speaker:back and finish it, because the guy... And I'm not gonna tell you who it is. Okay,
Speaker:yeah, I am gonna tell you who it is. You probably don't know, because nobody in my
Speaker:"friend circles" would know who he is. It's Jake Monroe, and he was talking
Speaker:about friendships. And the funny thing was, as we were watching it, we may have
Speaker:gotten about seven or eight, maybe ten minutes into it, and my wife sitting
Speaker:behind me at her desk was like, "I'm still trying to figure out what he's talking
Speaker:about." So I decided to stop it right there, and, you know, I'd come back and
Speaker:finish watching it. But he was talking about friendships and relationships, and
Speaker:I guess, in a way, that struck kind of a chord, a nerve, a curve, a chord for me.
Speaker:Because, as I've been going through this alcohol retirement journey, I've had to
Speaker:evaluate some things, and that gets you to thinking about some things. You get a
Speaker:little bit nostalgic. I know I do, of some of the... some of the good times that you
Speaker:associate with alcohol consumption, and also the friendships. Sometimes the
Speaker:friendships that you damn near destroy because of the fact that you were
Speaker:drinking. I've stepped my foot in it more than once, for sure, and for those that
Speaker:have stuck with me, I've been very appreciative. I guess it comes down to
Speaker:the question, "Is there ever a such thing as a best friend, or is it just simply
Speaker:that at certain periods of our life we can have best friends?" You can have more
Speaker:than one best friend, and that seems like an oxymoron, because you have,
Speaker:you know, you have good, better, and best. Well, best is supposed to be the
Speaker:ultimate, right? It's not like we have good, best, better, better pro, better pro max,
Speaker:you know, taking a page from the way some of our iPhones are named. But you have a
Speaker:best friend, and for a long, long time growing up, especially when I got
Speaker:into my teenage years and my early 20s, my best friend in the world was my
Speaker:cousin, my second cousin, who shall remain nameless. And honestly, between him and
Speaker:another friend of mine, who was like a year or two older, they were really my
Speaker:best friends in the world. I haven't spoken to my cousin since my mom passed
Speaker:away, and prior to that, it had been easily a decade and a half since I'd
Speaker:actually spoken to him. We moved to where we live now in 2006, and it just so
Speaker:happened that my wife, I believe this is the story, my wife was at Lowe's. But yeah,
Speaker:I think it was at Lowe's. And she ran into him and his fiancée, wife, I can't,
Speaker:honestly, I cannot remember if they ever got married. And so suddenly, they
Speaker:followed her back here, and they got to see the house. And honestly, that was
Speaker:probably the first time I had spoken to him in just a couple of years at that
Speaker:point. And so there was a time where he and I were just like, like brothers, you
Speaker:know, thick as thieves, as they say. And I think back on that, and it's
Speaker:kind of heartbreaking that we don't talk, we don't, I know nothing about his life.
Speaker:I know where he used to live. I don't know if he still lives there or not. I'm
Speaker:gonna presume he does. The other one, the other best friend at the time, he
Speaker:lives in Texas. And I actually talked to him earlier this year because he
Speaker:called to wish me a happy birthday, which was something out of the blue. And
Speaker:then I turned around and I try to always remember to send him a text on his
Speaker:birthday. It's in February. But it was a shock. It was a shock for him to actually
Speaker:call and wish me a happy birthday in, you know, in January. I try to check on him
Speaker:from time to time, especially whenever they get bad weather going through Texas.
Speaker:I'm like, "Hey, dude, you doing all right?" But that was pretty much the 90s, you
Speaker:know. And then we started getting into the 2000s, and I went to work for the
Speaker:city of Tifton. And then I wound up making friends with this guy that
Speaker:started out as a customer. And then I just recognized that he was frickin'
Speaker:smart when it came to computer technology and things like that. And so I
Speaker:managed to hire him in. And we just developed a brotherly friendship there. I
Speaker:mean, and unfortunately, one of the things we shared was a love of
Speaker:alcohol. He likes to joke that he wasn't as much of a heavy drinker
Speaker:before he met me than after he met me. And I laugh and I said, "Well, the same is
Speaker:true for me, too." And then we had this shared love of eventually World
Speaker:of Warcraft. And of course, there was another guy that we hired in. And I'm not
Speaker:sure that he ever made it to best friend status, but if measuring
Speaker:of friendships is one through ten, and ten is best friend, he was definitely a
Speaker:nine. Pretty sure he would have done anything for me, I would have done
Speaker:anything for him, just like the other guy. And I'm keeping names out of this. And I
Speaker:guess it's easier when you're working with each other and you see each other
Speaker:day in and day out to maintain that best friend relationship. Because once I
Speaker:left in 2012, of course, we didn't see each other every day. And it got to the
Speaker:point where instead of talking to each other maybe once a month, we might talk
Speaker:to each other once every six months, we might text each other once a year now.
Speaker:And it's been probably a couple of years since I've actually talked to or texted
Speaker:with the other guy. They have both since left the same company that I
Speaker:worked for. And it's gone through a couple of different hands, transition,
Speaker:you know, been sold off, etc. And the other thing is, is through all of that,
Speaker:through podcasting, I've actually made friends with two additional people. Well,
Speaker:three people, actually. And we do send messages to each other on
Speaker:Discord every once in a while. He lives in Alabama now, I think. Used to live in
Speaker:Columbus. So if he listens to this, he'll know exactly who I'm
Speaker:talking about. The other one, as far as I know, still lives in Columbus. And
Speaker:the third one, you already know, is Sam in Kentucky. We podcast together. We did
Speaker:the crossover for Doctor Who. And the funny thing is, out of those three,
Speaker:there's only one that no longer talks to me. And I don't know why. I don't know
Speaker:what happened to that friendship. Were we ever at that best friend status? I
Speaker:thought we were getting really close. To the point that before he moved away, I
Speaker:mean, we literally were doing a two to three times a week podcast where he was
Speaker:literally coming over to my studio and sitting here. And I thought we were
Speaker:doing a pretty good... It was a fun show. Doing a daily three or four
Speaker:times a week, though, and being creative enough and having enough content for it
Speaker:to be entertaining, that is tough. It is very tough. Especially when he was
Speaker:working a full-time job and I was still trying to grow my business. And so I
Speaker:haven't chatted with him verbally, because we would get on Discord and we
Speaker:talked to one another. We've actually talked to each other on the cell phone
Speaker:before, but mainly we would chat back and forth in Discord. It's probably
Speaker:been three, four years now, and I just don't know what happened. And that saddens
Speaker:me. It really does, because whether friendships elevate to the level
Speaker:of best friend or not, they can still be a relationship that is, "Look, this is
Speaker:someone I can count on. This is someone I care about. And this is someone that I
Speaker:will do whatever I can to help them in a time of need." And I still feel that way
Speaker:about all of these folks. It's just that I don't get to talk to them. And
Speaker:honestly, if it was a situation where I did something stupid and boneheaded
Speaker:while I was intoxicated and I'm not aware of it, then I would like to be made
Speaker:aware of it so that I can make amends and apologize. Especially to the one who
Speaker:no longer communicates with me. I've been told that this individual was dealing
Speaker:with some issues, and I don't know what if I had anything to do with those
Speaker:issues. I don't know. Nobody will tell me. So if I did, all I can say is, "I apologize."
Speaker:I don't know what I'm apologizing for, but I'll apologize. And it's just,
Speaker:I don't know, man. As I've gotten older, it seems like my friend circle has
Speaker:shrunken. Is that the word? Shrunken? I don't give a shit if it is or it isn't.
Speaker:But it's definitely gotten smaller, and I can still communicate with several of
Speaker:these people. I don't think anything less of any of them. Whether they think
Speaker:anything less of me, I don't know. Like I said, I've made my mistakes. Being an only
Speaker:child, I grew up as sort of a selfish, arrogant asshole, and the alcohol just
Speaker:exacerbated that a lot of times. I mean, ask my wife. One of the reasons, one of
Speaker:the driving forces, the motivation behind me deciding to retire from alcohol was
Speaker:the fact that our long-term marriage was starting to crack. I mean, we've been
Speaker:married this year, 34 years. That's unheard of in a lot of, especially in Gen
Speaker:X relationships. My parents had it. Her parents still have it. But we have a lot
Speaker:of people that we graduated with that have been married two or three times,
Speaker:possibly even more. When I realized that as much as I thought that I needed that
Speaker:alcohol, I needed to keep my marriage together, that was even more
Speaker:important. So that was the major impetus for saying, "Look, this is
Speaker:it. I'm done. This isn't a one-year thing. This is not a two-year thing. This is a
Speaker:lifestyle change," as I've said before. And sometimes, if you're in a situation
Speaker:like this where the only commonality between you and your friends is the
Speaker:alcohol, and then you are no longer partaking of the alcohol, that in itself
Speaker:can be stressful on a friendship to the point where the friendship just dissolves.
Speaker:I don't think that's the case here because the connective tissue of
Speaker:these friendships was already fraying, if you will, before I decided that I needed
Speaker:to retire from alcohol. I don't know. I mean, as far as I can say, with as much
Speaker:certainty as I can say, I never found myself in a position where my friends
Speaker:were the type of friends that were only around because they could get anything
Speaker:from me. And then when that, whatever that was, they could no longer get from me,
Speaker:then the friendship dissolved. I never had that situation. I never found myself
Speaker:in that situation either, where it was something that I was friends with
Speaker:somebody for a particular benefit, and then when that benefit went away, I no
Speaker:longer wanted to have anything to do with that person. I've never been
Speaker:in that situation on either side of it. I guess it's just the natural progression
Speaker:as we get older, and we grow older, we mature, life changes, and we just grow
Speaker:apart. So it did, just that little bit of video of Jake's yesterday got me to
Speaker:thinking about that. Now he's talking about some scenarios that are more
Speaker:in line with having friends around that were only there because they could
Speaker:benefit from that friendship, and when they could no longer benefit from that
Speaker:friendship, they would leave. So that's, I didn't start this thought process
Speaker:because of that, going, "Yeah, that was a scenario I was in." It was never a scenario
Speaker:I was in, but it did make me think about how I can count on one hand, because
Speaker:there's probably less than five, of the people that, of my friends that I still
Speaker:actually talk to on any routine basis. And when I say routine, I say maybe once
Speaker:or twice a month. I probably talk to Sam more than any of my other long-term
Speaker:friendships that I've had. And I mean, he lives in Kentucky. Oh, so anyway, just a
Speaker:little sidebar thing here. I decided I wanted to, it started bothering me
Speaker:yesterday, and maybe somebody will find this, I don't know, comforting,
Speaker:that maybe they've got the same scenario, and they're like, "What's
Speaker:wrong with me?" I don't think anything's wrong with you. I just think this is the
Speaker:nature of life. Friendships come and go. Relationships come and go. Hopefully your
Speaker:marriages don't come and go, but I think that's where we are, and we like
Speaker:to think that any of those bridges that may have gotten burned, especially in
Speaker:those friendships, that were directly a result of us being complete and utter
Speaker:assholes, because we were being fueled by alcohol, that we can mend those,
Speaker:rebuild those bridges, mend those fences. All of the little witticisms, if
Speaker:you will. But yeah, I think that's it. Hell, I don't even know, what is this, 452 days,
Speaker:three, doesn't matter. It's definitely over 450 days of alcohol retirement.
Speaker:Alright, that's pretty much it. Until the next one.
