I learned in the last week that my best friend in the world is moving 3000 miles away to Seattle, WA. I’ve never been on this side of the aisle before. I’ve always been the one who decides to move away from everything he knows and venture off into the world. This is a completely different view of how that whole process works. I’m always bothered by having to leave a place because of all the friends that I move away from, but I’m also sort of uplifted about the adventure I’m about to go on and who I might meet. This whole situation is completely backwards for me and I’m having issues dealing with it.

I came to a conclusion about myself this past weekend when Steph and I were having a pretty deep conversation about life over an appetizer at Garfield’s. Every time I lose a friend to distance (both figurative and literal) I honestly lose a bit of myself. I invest so much of what I have into my relationships with people that I’m completely unsure what to do with myself when they leave. I’m not sure where all this comes from, but I feel like whenever I have a special thing with someone else that I’ll never be able to find someone else like them. Which has been pretty accurate so far.

Take Lando for instance. He’s moving to Seattle. When he leaves, I will have lost one of the wittiest people I’ve ever met and somebody I can confide in more than anyone (other than Steph of course.) He’s the only other friend I have that I can sit around and quote “The Big Lebowski” and “Pulp Fiction” with and laugh endlessly. He’s the only person that would even think to watch “Black Dynamite” with me and we nearly died laughing. We discuss Star Wars to no end and he deals with my constant re-tellings of stories he’s heard a hundred times. Not to mention he also got me to start running and exercising even though I’m one of the most difficult people he’s probably ever dealt with in that respect. We invented “Porching” together along with our friend, Dave, and I’m not sure how all that’s going to work once he’s gone. Ugh…this sucks. Who is going to help fill the gap that he’s leaving behind? I know he’s only a Skype call away, but that’s a whole lot different than being right next door.

I remember when my good buddy Patrick and I split ways. I thought I would move to Florida and keep playing guitar, and keep learning everything I could about music. That stopped all but completely when I ended up in the middle of nowhere in Tallahassee. Even when I did meet some awesome people, I never got the spark for music back. I lost something I thought would always be there and now my electric guitar gathers dust most of the time. I used to poor so much of my soul into writing music and lyrics to play with Patrick. With him not in my life as much, I don’t play much at all. I strum a few things and write a lick here and there, but nothing that will ever develop into a whole song that I can play and sing with friends. That part of me is just gone and I’m not sure if I’ll ever find someone to help pull it out again.

This list could go on and on with people who had a huge influence on me. My buddy Tony and I used to get together with a group of guys and play D&D on Saturdays. I haven’t played D&D since we hung out together a few years ago. Yet another thing I just can’t seem to get back. Without Ashley, I probably wouldn’t podcast. And, let’s face it, without Steph I might have trouble even finding a purpose for breathing.

This seems to have become a depressing post, and I’m not depressed. I’m just bummed and feeling a little introspective. I’ve been involved in so much awesome stuff and gathered so many cool skills and hobbies from the people I’ve been around, but it’s like without them I can’t seem to keep any of it going.

I hope this post hasn’t belittled anybody or made them feel like they weren’t a catalyst to something I got into. Everybody I know has left a huge impact on me in a ton of different ways. These are just people who were so instrumental in something for so long that I don’t really know how to keep doing stuff without them. Who knows?! Maybe I’ll pull myself back together and just keep moving forward. I guess I should probably just focus on the stuff that I’m learning from new people rather than looking back at all the things I used to do.

Anyway, it’s late and I probably shoot hit the hay. Good talk, blog.

Later :)