Waving goodbye to two old friends.

Times change and sometimes I need to accept that a part of my daily routine that at one time had been really important to me has gradually become either peripheral - or in one case I’m thinking about downright burdensome.

On the other hand sometimes priorities move in the opposite direction and an activity that I had embarked upon casually or even by accident suddenly became really quite significant to me. Examples of this would be the Ragleth Writers and the Church Stretton group “Walking for Health”.

This week I said my final goodbyes to an internet based group I have visited almost daily for three years. Two weeks ago I would have said that the group was still very important to me. Certainly I didn’t have even the slightest intention of leaving. Nor can I say that I have identified any one event that has prompted my change of heart. I think it was more a sudden realisation that I was reading the same old views being endlessly repeated combined with a "zero sum" meeting of minds between the protagonists.  It all suddenly seemed rather trivial and pointless and simply not the best use of my time and energy. I wonder how long it will be before any of the current group members notices that I have departed?

A bit sadder is my decision to stop initiating email contact with a friend in the USA. If she emails me I will reply and will be happy to do so. But I’m not going to be the one that restarts our long running conversation. For the last couple of years it has almost always been me taking the lead. I would think, “Oh, I haven’t heard from X for a while, I will write her a letter” and then I would look back through the archives to find that it was anything from 4 to 8 weeks since I had last heard from her. Virtually never did she take the initiative and it’s going to be quite interesting to see if she ever gets back in touch. In one way I hope she does – hence proving me wrong – but I wouldn’t bet on it!