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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[music]

I believe this will be episode 47 of Call Me Donovan. I call it a little bit

of a pod... not really a podcast. You know, we're starting to get this little

blending between podcast versus YouTube videos and, you know, as an old-school

podcaster myself, as I've mentioned before, I started in 2011. I'm not the

oldest of anybody that's actually podcasted in their life. That's

for sure, but for the longest time, I mean, a podcast was an audio-only thing. Now,

even back in the early days, you would stream the video of you recording

the podcast live, and you may have a video version of the podcast, but a

podcast was always synonymous with an audio file that was accessed via an RSS

feed, and that you would either maybe get it on the website, maybe it was embedded

on the website of the podcast, or you use a podcatcher software like Pocketcast

or Overcast or Down... Downcast or Downcaster? I forget. Is that even around?

Apple Podcast, etc. But now, I mean, YouTube itself actually has a section like this

podcast, Call Me Donovan, the audio version automatically gets synced into my

YouTube page. So, yeah, it's a little redundant if I do like a video version

like I'm actually doing right now and recording a video version of it. So you

wind up with an audio version that shows up if you go to YouTube and click on the...

I don't know. It does... It gets... It gets a little confusing. So, got off on topic

again, as usual. But I was watching a YouTube video yesterday, and I need to go

back and finish it, because the guy... And I'm not gonna tell you who it is. Okay,

yeah, I am gonna tell you who it is. You probably don't know, because nobody in my

"friend circles" would know who he is. It's Jake Monroe, and he was talking

about friendships. And the funny thing was, as we were watching it, we may have

gotten about seven or eight, maybe ten minutes into it, and my wife sitting

behind me at her desk was like, "I'm still trying to figure out what he's talking

about." So I decided to stop it right there, and, you know, I'd come back and

finish watching it. But he was talking about friendships and relationships, and

I guess, in a way, that struck kind of a chord, a nerve, a curve, a chord for me.

Because, as I've been going through this alcohol retirement journey, I've had to

evaluate some things, and that gets you to thinking about some things. You get a

little bit nostalgic. I know I do, of some of the... some of the good times that you

associate with alcohol consumption, and also the friendships. Sometimes the

friendships that you damn near destroy because of the fact that you were

drinking. I've stepped my foot in it more than once, for sure, and for those that

have stuck with me, I've been very appreciative. I guess it comes down to

the question, "Is there ever a such thing as a best friend, or is it just simply

that at certain periods of our life we can have best friends?" You can have more

than one best friend, and that seems like an oxymoron, because you have,

you know, you have good, better, and best. Well, best is supposed to be the

ultimate, right? It's not like we have good, best, better, better pro, better pro max,

you know, taking a page from the way some of our iPhones are named. But you have a

best friend, and for a long, long time growing up, especially when I got

into my teenage years and my early 20s, my best friend in the world was my

cousin, my second cousin, who shall remain nameless. And honestly, between him and

another friend of mine, who was like a year or two older, they were really my

best friends in the world. I haven't spoken to my cousin since my mom passed

away, and prior to that, it had been easily a decade and a half since I'd

actually spoken to him. We moved to where we live now in 2006, and it just so

happened that my wife, I believe this is the story, my wife was at Lowe's. But yeah,

I think it was at Lowe's. And she ran into him and his fiancée, wife, I can't,

honestly, I cannot remember if they ever got married. And so suddenly, they

followed her back here, and they got to see the house. And honestly, that was

probably the first time I had spoken to him in just a couple of years at that

point. And so there was a time where he and I were just like, like brothers, you

know, thick as thieves, as they say. And I think back on that, and it's

kind of heartbreaking that we don't talk, we don't, I know nothing about his life.

I know where he used to live. I don't know if he still lives there or not. I'm

gonna presume he does. The other one, the other best friend at the time, he

lives in Texas. And I actually talked to him earlier this year because he

called to wish me a happy birthday, which was something out of the blue. And

then I turned around and I try to always remember to send him a text on his

birthday. It's in February. But it was a shock. It was a shock for him to actually

call and wish me a happy birthday in, you know, in January. I try to check on him

from time to time, especially whenever they get bad weather going through Texas.

I'm like, "Hey, dude, you doing all right?" But that was pretty much the 90s, you

know. And then we started getting into the 2000s, and I went to work for the

city of Tifton. And then I wound up making friends with this guy that

started out as a customer. And then I just recognized that he was frickin'

smart when it came to computer technology and things like that. And so I

managed to hire him in. And we just developed a brotherly friendship there. I

mean, and unfortunately, one of the things we shared was a love of

alcohol. He likes to joke that he wasn't as much of a heavy drinker

before he met me than after he met me. And I laugh and I said, "Well, the same is

true for me, too." And then we had this shared love of eventually World

of Warcraft. And of course, there was another guy that we hired in. And I'm not

sure that he ever made it to best friend status, but if measuring

of friendships is one through ten, and ten is best friend, he was definitely a

nine. Pretty sure he would have done anything for me, I would have done

anything for him, just like the other guy. And I'm keeping names out of this. And I

guess it's easier when you're working with each other and you see each other

day in and day out to maintain that best friend relationship. Because once I

left in 2012, of course, we didn't see each other every day. And it got to the

point where instead of talking to each other maybe once a month, we might talk

to each other once every six months, we might text each other once a year now.

And it's been probably a couple of years since I've actually talked to or texted

with the other guy. They have both since left the same company that I

worked for. And it's gone through a couple of different hands, transition,

you know, been sold off, etc. And the other thing is, is through all of that,

through podcasting, I've actually made friends with two additional people. Well,

three people, actually. And we do send messages to each other on

Discord every once in a while. He lives in Alabama now, I think. Used to live in

Columbus. So if he listens to this, he'll know exactly who I'm

talking about. The other one, as far as I know, still lives in Columbus. And

the third one, you already know, is Sam in Kentucky. We podcast together. We did

the crossover for Doctor Who. And the funny thing is, out of those three,

there's only one that no longer talks to me. And I don't know why. I don't know

what happened to that friendship. Were we ever at that best friend status? I

thought we were getting really close. To the point that before he moved away, I

mean, we literally were doing a two to three times a week podcast where he was

literally coming over to my studio and sitting here. And I thought we were

doing a pretty good... It was a fun show. Doing a daily three or four

times a week, though, and being creative enough and having enough content for it

to be entertaining, that is tough. It is very tough. Especially when he was

working a full-time job and I was still trying to grow my business. And so I

haven't chatted with him verbally, because we would get on Discord and we

talked to one another. We've actually talked to each other on the cell phone

before, but mainly we would chat back and forth in Discord. It's probably

been three, four years now, and I just don't know what happened. And that saddens

me. It really does, because whether friendships elevate to the level

of best friend or not, they can still be a relationship that is, "Look, this is

someone I can count on. This is someone I care about. And this is someone that I

will do whatever I can to help them in a time of need." And I still feel that way

about all of these folks. It's just that I don't get to talk to them. And

honestly, if it was a situation where I did something stupid and boneheaded

while I was intoxicated and I'm not aware of it, then I would like to be made

aware of it so that I can make amends and apologize. Especially to the one who

no longer communicates with me. I've been told that this individual was dealing

with some issues, and I don't know what if I had anything to do with those

issues. I don't know. Nobody will tell me. So if I did, all I can say is, "I apologize."

I don't know what I'm apologizing for, but I'll apologize. And it's just,

I don't know, man. As I've gotten older, it seems like my friend circle has

shrunken. Is that the word? Shrunken? I don't give a shit if it is or it isn't.

But it's definitely gotten smaller, and I can still communicate with several of

these people. I don't think anything less of any of them. Whether they think

anything less of me, I don't know. Like I said, I've made my mistakes. Being an only

child, I grew up as sort of a selfish, arrogant asshole, and the alcohol just

exacerbated that a lot of times. I mean, ask my wife. One of the reasons, one of

the driving forces, the motivation behind me deciding to retire from alcohol was

the fact that our long-term marriage was starting to crack. I mean, we've been

married this year, 34 years. That's unheard of in a lot of, especially in Gen

X relationships. My parents had it. Her parents still have it. But we have a lot

of people that we graduated with that have been married two or three times,

possibly even more. When I realized that as much as I thought that I needed that

alcohol, I needed to keep my marriage together, that was even more

important. So that was the major impetus for saying, "Look, this is

it. I'm done. This isn't a one-year thing. This is not a two-year thing. This is a

lifestyle change," as I've said before. And sometimes, if you're in a situation

like this where the only commonality between you and your friends is the

alcohol, and then you are no longer partaking of the alcohol, that in itself

can be stressful on a friendship to the point where the friendship just dissolves.

I don't think that's the case here because the connective tissue of

these friendships was already fraying, if you will, before I decided that I needed

to retire from alcohol. I don't know. I mean, as far as I can say, with as much

certainty as I can say, I never found myself in a position where my friends

were the type of friends that were only around because they could get anything

from me. And then when that, whatever that was, they could no longer get from me,

then the friendship dissolved. I never had that situation. I never found myself

in that situation either, where it was something that I was friends with

somebody for a particular benefit, and then when that benefit went away, I no

longer wanted to have anything to do with that person. I've never been

in that situation on either side of it. I guess it's just the natural progression

as we get older, and we grow older, we mature, life changes, and we just grow

apart. So it did, just that little bit of video of Jake's yesterday got me to

thinking about that. Now he's talking about some scenarios that are more

in line with having friends around that were only there because they could

benefit from that friendship, and when they could no longer benefit from that

friendship, they would leave. So that's, I didn't start this thought process

because of that, going, "Yeah, that was a scenario I was in." It was never a scenario

I was in, but it did make me think about how I can count on one hand, because

there's probably less than five, of the people that, of my friends that I still

actually talk to on any routine basis. And when I say routine, I say maybe once

or twice a month. I probably talk to Sam more than any of my other long-term

friendships that I've had. And I mean, he lives in Kentucky. Oh, so anyway, just a

little sidebar thing here. I decided I wanted to, it started bothering me

yesterday, and maybe somebody will find this, I don't know, comforting,

that maybe they've got the same scenario, and they're like, "What's

wrong with me?" I don't think anything's wrong with you. I just think this is the

nature of life. Friendships come and go. Relationships come and go. Hopefully your

marriages don't come and go, but I think that's where we are, and we like

to think that any of those bridges that may have gotten burned, especially in

those friendships, that were directly a result of us being complete and utter

assholes, because we were being fueled by alcohol, that we can mend those,

rebuild those bridges, mend those fences. All of the little witticisms, if

you will. But yeah, I think that's it. Hell, I don't even know, what is this, 452 days,

three, doesn't matter. It's definitely over 450 days of alcohol retirement.

Alright, that's pretty much it. Until the next one.