Local
There’s a lot to be said about how the world has been getting smaller for years. With the internet, I can become friends with someone I’ve never met who lives in Edmonton, Canada and shares many of my same interests. A few years ago, staying in touch with this person would require either expensive long-distance phone calls combined with letters. Meeting this person in the first place would’ve been nearly impossible, and it’s entirely likely that this friendship wouldn’t exist. That’s pretty cool.
However, I can’t help but wonder about the importance of those friends that aren’t made online, the ones that you grow up with and experience things with, in the real world. As I walked by the trail close to my high school with a friend I’ve known since I was 14, I started to think about the friendships I carried from my hometown. Personally, I’ve always had trouble staying close to a lot of the friends I had growing up, but the ones that have stuck around have been really important to me.
It’s possible that I’m missing why these people matter, crediting location with being the main factor when it’s just time spent that makes the difference. After all, one study explains that it takes 90 hours of time spent together for someone to become a real friend and 200 hours for someone to become a close friend. However, I think that we build connections with the people who have stuck with us and seen us transition through the different phases of our lives.
Maybe it’s not that important that I can reminisce about the time that our class president made national news by suing the school, or random other shared experiences at high school and middle school, but it feels like it creates a greater closeness between all of us students. After all, each experience in our lives shapes us in some way or another and when someone has experienced the same things as us, we feel more similar and relating to them becomes a lot easier.
Who can really know? Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of my middle school years and a lot of my high school years, I will hold a special connection to the fellow members of Raider Nation and the Webb Bridge Jaguars. (am I a fromager, because that was cheesy!)
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Book
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon - at 639 pages, this book is definitely a big boy, but it’s worth it since it tells a story in a way that feels part history book, part novel. Despite being fictional, the book is grounded in a mountain of research that provides an accurate picture of the time and rise of comic books.
Playlist
Summer - I just refreshed my summer playlist, and it’s probably the most eclectic any of my summer playlists have ever been. Check it out and send me any of your summer playlists!
Article
“Inside Nintendo's secretive creative process” by Keith Stuart and Keza MacDonald - interesting and slightly intimidating article about how Nintendo manages to do well in the video game marketing by completely avoiding the beaten path.
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:~)
Love,
Nikhil