(no subject)

[learnedax]

I was thinking about networking (the social kind, this time) and my seeming inability to do it effectively. A friend actually lent me a book on the subject (which, tangentially, is moderately interesting but reads like a giant sales pitch that can be boiled down to "pay attention to people") which asks how many people you can borrow a lot of money from in the middle of the night. Not perhaps the best definition of a close friend, but I get the same set with most other yardsticks, including "friends help you move. real friends help you move bodies."

The cardinality of that set is two. Maybe I shouldn't worry, since most people probably can't summon too many abettors in such dire circumstances, but I had thought that I had quite a few friends. I like spending time with people, and I get along with almost everyone, so it's puzzling to realize that I really don't have a close-knit core group of friends. My guess would be that I am too much a breadth-first social navigator, so I've got a host of casual acquaintances and a moratorium of people who care. That's a singularly depressing thought, and I'm going to pretend it's only cynicism.

Comments

Another possibility...

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

Another possibility is that you need more friends who actually have money to lend, or friends who are more gullible and easier to take advantage of.

The SCA is full of chivalric suckers who very well might lend you money because they are nice people and you need it. There are a few people who would lend money to aquaintances in need.

A better metric is someone who would let you in on a secret and vice-versa. If you can't tell them about a small thing like a sex-change, they aren't really your friend.