Thick as Thieves

Email from Lee I learn that he "doesn't talk much to Yalies anymore " and from Sarah that she "doesn't talk on the phone much." And, indeed, it's harder to get even me excited to gab on the phone much.

It seemed like there was a time in our early 30s when people settled down and found something resembling a career and had kids and whenever I would see people there would be total joy and gabfest, even people I never used to like.

Does the power of shared experience diminish as we age? Does the succession of milestones: marriage, kids, graduation, deaths, divorce, financial crisis, medical trauma, job loss, do all these things become so prosaic themselves that it becomes more difficult to bond over them? Does it become harder to maintain strong relationships? Or just more labor-intensive. Seems like when you talk to em lots of people are like: "whatever, we're aging and we're all gonna die anyway, I'm going home to bed."

I know I know, I should get my butt back to NC and eat some Q. But I feel like there's I'm witnessing a general if gradual emotional pullback of sorts, if not necessarily from my intrepid readers.

Here's what I mean.

The Jam


The Jamm